The lobster featured on this New York Aquarium postcard from the 1910s weighed in at a whopping 21 lbs and was 38 inches long. WCS Archives Collection 2016. #lobsters #nationallobsterday #aquariumhistory #archives #postcards @nyaquarium
On August 19, 1977, the Bronx Zoo’s Wild Asia exhibit opened to the public. A New York Times review on that date declared that
Wild Asia conveys a feeling of remoteness wrapped in a pervasive and palpable stillness, which is broken only by the occasional snort or shrill of one of its 200 animals and birds of Asian provenance, the delighted gasp of visitors seated in the monorail train that makes a circuit of the region or the muted roar of traffic on the nearby Bronx River Parkway.
As we reported back in August 2015, the WCS Archives received a Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. We’re pleased now to report the completion of the project, in which we developed a Conceptual Preservation Design Plan for a new WCS Archives space. Situated in the Bronx Zoo’s Heads and Horns Building, this space would include a large collections storage area to provide safe, sustainable preservation conditions for our historical materials, proper fhich we currently lack) to host those consulting the collections as well as classes and small lectures, and a small exhibition area to showcase WCS’s historical treasures to invited audiences. Continue reading
In fall of 1916, the Bronx Zoo opened its Animal Hospital—the first such facility to open at a US zoo. To celebrate this centennial, we’re looking back on some WCS Zoological Health Program images and materials from the WCS Archives.
In the first phase of a project whose eventual purpose is to conserve the WCS Archives’ collection of nearly 50,000 photographic negatives, the assessment of some 10,000-plus of these has been a mostly shared endeavor between myself and another intern. Dating from 1899 to 1946, this first batch of negatives is of interest from more than one perspective: not only do the images constitute a visual timeline of WCS’s history and the histories of zoos, aquariums, and wildlife conservation, the negatives themselves can also be seen as artifacts that represent milestones from within the discipline of photography. Among other things in the collection, we see the transition from the use of glass to film negatives, as well as early attempts at photo manipulation. Continue reading
Our NDSR Resident, Genevieve Havemeyer-King, was recently one of the organizers of a free, all-day symposium on digital preservation held under the auspices of the Metropolitan New York Library Council, the Archivists Round Table of New York, and the Brooklyn Historical Society.
As an attendee, I can say that the event was a rousing success! In her latest post on the NDSR-NY Resident blog, Genevieve showcases the day’s highlights and links to slides and other resources from the presentations and workshops:
http://ndsr.nycdigital.org/lets-get-digital-recap/
Check it out!
Our National Digital Stewardship Resident here at the WCS Archives, Genevieve Havemeyer-King, has another post on the NDSR-NY Program blog:
http://ndsr.nycdigital.org/trojan-dots-and-diy-solutions/
In this post Genevieve talks about her takeaways from a recent conference and describes one of the smallest challenges we’ve faced so far—so tiny, in fact, that we nearly didn’t see it!
Check it out!
Genevieve Havemeyer-King, the National Digital Stewardship Resident here at the WCS Archives, has recently published a two-part post at the Library of Congress’s digital preservation blog, “The Signal”:
Genevieve’s series of blog posts documenting her time at WCS continue here with a discussion of the complexities of preserving geospatial data and an interview with Frank Donnelly, the GIS Librarian at Baruch College (CUNY).
Check it out!