Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Аннотация A wildlife biologist and science writer, Chadwick (The Fate of the Elephant) describes a project in Montana to train grizzly bears to avoid foraging in populated areas. Using negative reinforcement, the project team employs rubber bullets and a unique dog breed from Finland, among other things, to prod bears back into the wilderness before they become so accustomed to humans that they must be destroyed for safety reasons.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development serves as a basis for a comparative analysis of middle school students’ understanding of classification in the physical and digital library. Attention is also given to student comprehension of scientific classification. Results of this pilot study show that although participants had good comprehension of classification principles in the physical environment, with which they are more familiar, their understanding diminishes in the digital environment and when addressing scientific classification. Results are compared to an earlier study and implications for the design of educational science digital libraries are discussed.

ABSTRACT Global collaboration is increasingly important across universities and conservation biology organizations. In this example, a partnership resulted in the creation of a short course aimed at exploring communication forms and digital tools that facilitate scholarly communication in conservation biology. Questions the authors hoped to answer in the course were: What are the benefits and limitations of these digital tools? How can researchers in conservation biology use these methods to share data, show impact, and connect to colleagues and stakeholders? Why is open access even more important in this highly collaborative scholarly environment? How can communities of interest benefit scientists and the public?

Innovations in digital, information, and computation fields are generating new conservation communication forms and modes of research/teaching, widening collaborative conservation communities, and expanding practitioners' "publics". Addressing a shared need among conservation and wildlife practitioners, the activities in this course explore the evolving range of digital media platforms, enrich participants' understanding of digital tools' potential, and consider best practices/ethics of multimedia publishing. Through two conservation case studies, participants will explore social media and research collaboration tools, and consider how these digital developments may affect publishing and scholarly communication. Tools surveyed will include photo and document sharing, social media, and interactive presentation. We’ll also review ways to integrate literature reviews and current awareness for keeping up with new publications.

The library of the Freer Gallery of Art | Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is considered one of the finest East Asian art research collections in the United States. The development and progress of the library’s Chinese Collection has mirrored the historical changes in the field of Chinese art studies in the last one hundred years. Today, the library collection has more than 90,000 volumes, including 17,437 Chinese language monographs and 836 serials in over 25,000 volumes. In a landscape of changing scholarship, technology and user demands, the library is balancing the use of printed materials and digital resources and collaborating with other libraries to continue to meet the needs of curators, researchers and visitors.

Between Independence and the late 1830s, Americans’ perception of India changed dramatically.  Such a shift was due to the transition from merchant-mariners to missionaries as the predominant professions to visit the subcontinent.  From the Treaty of Paris to the War of 1812, American trade with India boomed as Philadelphia, Boston, and Salem merchants rode the winds of neutral trade to windfall profits.  Largely forbidden from trading with the houses of the East India Company, however, American businessmen had to look elsewhere for trading partners.  They found them in the well-educated native Indian merchants called banians in Calcutta and dubashes in Madras.  Since their success in India was predicated on the quality of their commercial relationships with native Indian merchants, American captains and supercargoes had every reason to overcome cultural differences.  While early national American merchants varied in their ability to drop prejudices, many of the most successful India traders forged remarkably respectful, fair, and even friendly relationships with their indigenous counterparts. 
The profitability of the America India trade dropped precipitously after Congress passed new tariff legislation in 1816.  By then, a new, more evangelically minded generation of Americans had begun to land in Anglo-Indian ports. The rise of American missionary labor in the subcontinent resulted in a very different image of native Indians and their civilization.  Unlike merchants, missionaries had every reason to exploit cultural and religious differences, both for publicity and for reasons of funding.  Their writings and publications had a profound effect on the way in which ordinary Americans thought of themselves, of non-Christian peoples, and of their destiny as a people.

Facing northern resistance to the expansion of slavery after the Mexican-American War, some proslavery expansionists looked to South America as a possible site for southern colonialism.  Their gaze was partly inspired by South Americans’ own interest in establishing white colonies in their countries.  In the 1850s, expansionists in the federal government directed the Navy to explore major South American river systems and report on their suitability for proslavery settlement.  The first surveyed the Amazon River valley between 1851 and 1853, while a second charted the Rio de la Plata watershed between 1853 and 1855 and again from 1859 to 1860.  While largely forgotten today, together these missions formed a central strategy for federal proslavery expansion in the final decade of the early republic.  This article examines how proslavery expansionists in the 1850s sought to use the U.S. Navy to explore the Amazon and Rio de La Plata river systems and report on their suitability for proslavery settlement.  While largely forgotten today, naval exploration formed a central strategy for expanding the Slave South.