Celebrating the launch of JSTOR Global Plants

This month sees the launch of JSTOR Global Plants (formerly JSTOR Plant Science) a community-contributed dataset featuring more than 2 million high resolution plant type specimen images as well as reference works, drawings, paintings, photographs and archive materials related to plants and the history of botany.

The database is the product of an ongoing collaboration between more than 270 herbaria worldwide and one of the primary source highlights is Kew's very own Directors' Correspondence collection(DC) which provides an amazing variety of explorers' correspondence, predominantly from the 1830s to the 1920s.

Detail of a map of the area around Lake Shirwa, Mozambique c.1860, from John Kirk, chief assistant to David Livingstone on the second Zambesi Expedition, part of RBG Kew's Directors' Correspondence Collection. [Archives ref DC 60/153]

Users can search original letters and documents from the DC collection from Africa (c.7600 letters), Latin America (c.7400 letters), and Asia (c.9400 letters). We are currently working hard to add the North American DC collection. For a taste of the kind of items available check out our previous Library, Art & Archives blog posts.

JSTOR Global Plants is a subscription site; access is available through terminals in Kew's Library Reading Room. Non-subscribers are able to search, view metadata, view thumbnail images and comment. We hope you enjoy browsing this amazing collection!

-Kat-