Improving Environmental Conditions in the Peter H Raven Library by Eliminating UV and Some Visible Light Using Window Film and Shades

FAIN: PG-263447-19

Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO 63110-3420)
Susie Cobbledidck (Project Director: April 2018 to August 2019)

The purchase and installation of UV filter film and shades to protect special collection materials located in the Missouri Botanical Garden Library’s reading room and cataloging processing room.  The 10,500 books in Special Collections include more than 1,000 volumes published between 1474 and 1753, predating the publication of Carl Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum, which used binomial nomenclature for the first time.  Other collection highlights include 960 botanical volumes by and about Linnaeus, a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a first octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, and an edition of 738 engravings made from 18^th-century copper plates that record the botanical discoveries made on Captain James Cook’s first voyage.

The Peter H Raven Library specializes in botany, but it also contains works of biography, natural history, exploration, anthropology, garden design, illustration and art. The Library holds about 240,000 monographs and journals in its General Collection and 10,500 books in Special Collections, the earliest dating from 1474. Our Collections contain illustrated volumes of interest to artists and art historians, many original bindings to support the work of bibliographers, and pre-Linnaean works of natural history whose contents reveal pre-scientific cosmologies. We are tasked with caring for these materials and passing them on in good condition to future generations, so we want to provide them with the best possible environmental conditions. Acting on the recommendation of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, we are requesting grant support to mitigate light exposure in our Reading Room and cataloging area via the installation of UV filter film and shades.