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EBHL Board
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Minutes of the 11th annual EBHL meeting, National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, Ireland, 13-14 May 2004
Present:
Fiona Ainsworth, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Sarah Ball of the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, opened the 11th annual EBHL meeting by welcoming everyone to Glasnevin. She then introduced Donal Synnott, the former Director of the Botanic Gardens (he retired in February 2004), who also welcomed the group and wished the meeting every success. Donal said that when he started at Glasnevin, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, it was the worst of times and became the best of times. The Gardens had suffered through lack of funding and maintenance. He particularly mentioned the difficulties faced by the library - the collections were housed in 7 separate rooms in 3 different buildings with no regular access for users - and paid tribute to the dedication of the librarians. At first the librarian (Mary Doyle and later Valerie Ingram) was based at Glasnevin only one day per week, but Sarah Ball has been Glasnevin's full time librarian since 1995. Donal spoke of the strategic importance of the library in persuading the Irish government to provide proper funding for the Botanic Gardens and to provide proper accommodation for such an important collection.
The business meeting then took place. John Flanagan, Secretary, thanked Donal Synnott for his welcome and also thanked Sarah Ball and Colette Edwards for their hard work in organising the meeting. He then introduced CBHL's representative and new members.
Susan Fraser attended as the repsentative of CBHL. Susan took over as Director of the Library at New York Botanical Garden in January 2004. She passed on greetings from the CBHL board and also from John Reed, her predecessor at NYBG. She thanked EBHL for having her at the meeting.
Gabriele Palfinger from the Natural History Museum in Vienna described her library. She runs the botanical library, which is part of the museum's library service. The service as a whole has about 400,000 volumes; the botanical library has about 13,000 volumes and about 2,000 serials (200 current). The library's subject coverage includes floras, taxonomy, systematics and phytology and it has a collection of travels and nineteenth century expedition accounts. An online catalogue (using Isis software) dates from 1990. Until Gaby's arrival 4 years ago, there had been a 10-year gap with no professional librarian. During this time, items were inventoried but not catalogued, apart from floras and serials. Then the library had to be closed due to lack of staff. When Gaby arrived, she discovered that the records of items on loan had been lost in this period. At present, she is employed for 40 hours per month. She looks forward to seeing as many EBHL members as possible in Vienna in 2005.
Ludmila Frankova introduced herself. She was born in Czechoslovakia but moved to the Netherlands 33 years ago. She has worked in the Library of the National Herbarium at Leiden University for 10 years and took over from Cees as Head 5 months ago. She said that trying to replace Cees is difficult! Ludmila has also taken over Cees' role as EBHL Treasurer.
Sini Karki-Folkersma works in the Viikki Science Library at the University of Helsinki, along with Marjatta Rautiala. Sini used to work in the Forestry Library (Marjatta in the Botany Library) but the University has restructured the library service into 4 campus libraries to make cost-savings. Sini is a botanist by profession.
Tamara Tchernaja from the Komarov Botanical Library in St Petersburg was due to attend the meeting but a problem with her visa prevented her from doing so. Cees Lut circulated a report from her.
John Flanagan then gave the Secretary's report. He circulated copies of the list of CBHL members affiliated to EBHL and a list of subscribers to the EBHL email list. he recommended the value of EBHL members becoming affiliated to CBHL (seconded by Gina Douglas). He stressed the importance of the EBHL network and that its strength lay in its informality. Roger Mills asked how EBHL members become affiliated to CBHL - the cost is 20 euro, which can be sent either to the Secretary, John Flanagan, or to the Treasurer, Ludmila Frankova.
The Treasurer's report was very brief - accounts were circulated but there were no questions.
Since Cees Lut is stepping down as Treasurer, Jane Hutcheon, President, then proposed Ludmila Frankova as the new Treasurer. This was seconded by Fiona Ainsworth.
The Secretary then thanked Koeltz Scientific Books for their generosity in providing travel funds, allowing Grozdana Sirotic from Zagreb to attend. Koeltz also provided funding for Tamara Tchernaja to travel to the National Herbarium in Leiden, the Netherlands. The Prseident announced that Koeltz had also provided two book vouchers to the value of 400 euro each, which will be presented to Andrea Dautovic from the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, and Edita Spahic from the Biology Library, University of Sarajevo. The President expressed her thanks on behalf of EBHL to Koeltz for their generosity and continued support.
The Prseident spoke about future meetings. Choosing to take the 2006 meeting first, she said that it would be held in Tallinn in Estonia. 2006 will be the 45th anniversary of Tallinn Botanic Garden so it is an appropriate time to visit. A travel fund will be available to assist members wishing to attend who would not otherwise be able to; it is hoped that colleagues from the Baltic and Russian states will be able to come. The President said that she hoped to see as many EBHL members as possible there.
2005 is the 17th International Botanical Congress in Vienna (18-23 July 2005). Roger Mills reported that we have been successful in making a joint CBHL/EBHL bid for a session. A session lasts half a day, so there would be time for 3 or 4 presentations. Roger stressed that all our customers will be present at the Congress and it is a good opportunity to meet them. The meeting agreed to post suggestions for how the session might be run to the EBHL list and that as many should attend as possible. Regarding the regular EBHL meeting, there are 3 options:
The Secretary suggested that 2 meetings in one year would be too much and that it is not essential to have a meeting every year. He suggested that an informal session would suffice for the business meeting, where the accounts could be discussed and approved. These could then be ratified by the email list later on. This was approved by the meeting. The meeting agreed to discuss the IBC session further by email.
Fiona Ainsworth, the Webmaster, circulated copies of the website with a request for any changes or suggestions to be sent to her via email. She also requested a volunteer to do the French language version of the minutes (post meeting note: Nathalie Charrier-Arrighi volunteered). The business meeting then closed.
After coffee and huge scones, the group was taken on a guided walk of Glasnevin Botanic Garden, where we were able to see some of the improvments made and rebuilding as pasrt of the restructuring programme.
After lunch, Roger Mills spoke about centralised collection management at Oxford, describing how the Plant Sciences Library (PSL) has been brought into the Oxford University Library Service (OULS). He said that in future budgets would be centralised too, rather than being held within the different libraries. He showed how the Plant Sciences Librarian is now part of the OULS management chain rather than reporting to the PSL's immediate user base. The PSL accounts for <2% of the OULS budget and collections. In order to get noticed in future, the Library is doing all it can to forge links with other organisations and get involved in wider projects, such as the digitisation of the Flora Graeca and various exhibitions.
Paul Maher from Glasnevin spoke next about the plant collecting activities of Augustine Henry in China. He sent many plants back: 158,000 between 1885 and the end of the nineteenth century, most of which were entirely new species. Glasnevin were preparing an exhibition for Chelsea Flower Show and decided to follow in Henry's footsteps by tracing his route through China. As well as encountering locals displaying medicinal plants, knowledge of which has been handed down through generations, they saw the plants Henry saw growing in the places he visited. The group was able to collect seed from some of the species endangered by the Three Gorges dams project. An access and benefit sharing agreement has been signed, so that the Chinese will be able to reintroduce those species once the dams project is complete.
Ciaran O'Connor, who is Chief Architect for the Office of Public Works, the sponsoring department of the Botanic Gardens, spoke about the restoration of the palm house, followed by a guided tour of the building itself. Restoration has only just been completed and the palm house was still empty of plants, so we were able to see the detail of the building very clearly. The restoration was the latest project in the master plan, following restoration of the curvilinear range elsewhere in the garden. The architect of the palm house was Richard Turner, who also designed the palm house at Kew. Ciaran's talk showed how much investigation had gone into the project to get the details as accurate as possible. As much original material was re-used as possible.
Thursday's programme closed with a tour of the Herbarium and Library, where we saw some of Glasnevin's treasures. The conference dinner was held at the Garden and the hospitality suite gave us a magnificent view of the Garden in the evening.
On Friday, the first talk was by Paul Cusack, the Director of the College of Amenity Horticulture, on the educational programmes run by the College. Currently, a 1-year certificate course and a 3-year diploma course are available. As well as horticulture, students do modules in communication, finance, planning and computer skills. They also have practical work experience in Glasnevin. The College has formed links with other organisations, including the Institute of Technology at Blanchardstown (for business skills), Dublin City & Council Parks Department, and the horticulture industry, to give students additional work experience.
Matthew Jebb, the Acting Director of the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, spoke about the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was ratified at the Earth Summit in 1992, with additions being made in Kyoto at the Climate Change Convention. The document is now 1200 pages long. 188 countries out of a possible 192 in the World have signed up to the Convention, whose main focus is on conservation, sustainability and sharing. As well as the CBD itself, the Conference of the Parties (COP) is held every two years, with the SBSTTA meeting in intermediate years (SBSTTA is the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice). The CBD's headquarters are at the Secretariat in Montreal in Canada. The CBD's website is at http://www.biodiv.org. Other useful websites are:
There are other organisations such as Plantlife International, the wild plant conservation charity, which identifies important plant areas (IPAs). There is also CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. This was ratified in 1975 and has been signed by 166 parties.
The last talk of the programme was given by Cathy Broad on the Linnaeus Link project. This is being run jointly by the Natural History Museum (NHM) and the Linnean Society of London, with other international partners providing data. The project aims to catalogue Linnaean titles from institutions worldwide, since many of the institutions which hold Linnaean material (by Linnaeus himself and his students) do not have their catalogues available online. The NHM has an extensive Linnaean collection, so the project is beginning with it. Cathy is on secondment from the Linnean Society to the NHM for three years. Cathy displayed a sample record, which has been catalogued to high standards, and highlighted some of the problems in verifying copy-specific details (such as annotations to the text). The project is surveying as many institutions as possible and initial summary results are available online, as is the survey form, at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/library/linn/.
In the afternoon, we visited Archbishop Narcissus Marsh's library, Ireland's first public library, which was built in 1701. Then we visited the Chester Beatty Library, which is both an art museum and library, and was bequeathed to the nation in 1968 by the collector Alfred Chester Beatty. In the evening, Sarah had arranged for us to go to an evening of traditional Irish music, which was great, although most of the audience were tourists! For those who could stay on, a trip through the countryside to the south of Dublin had been arranged for Saturday.
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Webmaster | Modified 14 June 2004 |