Happy New Year! We're celebrating with a new subject guide, Natural History in Special Collections. The guide features the work of several notable naturalists and covers materials dating from the fifteenth century to the present day from the rare books collection and Special Collections in Hornbake Library.
Natural History is a broad topic, spanning the scientific studies of the plants, animals, and objects of the natural world. As it's such a broad topic, natural history can be broken down into several different fields of study. The collection includes books pertaining to several different branches of natural history, ranging from herbology, botany, zoology, herpetology, entomology, ornithology, and marine biology.
Authors highlighted in our new subject guide include include Thomas Bewick, a natural historian and ornithologist who illustrated A General History of Quadrupeds and A History of British Birds. Also represented in the guide are works by John Edwards Holbrook, Conrad Gessner, Carl Linnaeus, and Robert Hooke, whose 17th century bestselling and groundbreaking scientific work, Micrographia, illustrates insects, plants, and everyday objects through the lens of a microscope.
Also included in the guide are materials related to agriculture. Agriculture is also a study of the flora and fauna of the world, however, while natural history is the observation of these living things alone, agriculture as a science focuses on human care and involvement with the things of the natural world.
Explore the Natural History in Special Collections to learn more about out rare book holdings related to natural history. To view more natural history books in Special Collections, search our catalog and contact us with questions!
Rebecca Lukachinski is a graduate student in the Masters of Library and Information Science program at UMD, and is a student assistant in the Literature and Rare Books Collections, Special Collections and University Archives.
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