Coulee plant publication a collaboration between library, faculty and community

trevor.kenney — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 22:31:28 +0000

A locally-produced book detailing the coulee plants of southern Alberta has been given new life and a new medium thanks to collaborative work between the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library, U of L faculty and the local community.

The 2nd edition of Common Coulee Plants of Southern Alberta is now available.

Dr. John Bain, in the U of L's Department of Biological Sciences, along with local botanist June Flanagan, recently published a 2nd edition of Common Coulee Plants of Southern Alberta. The book is free to download from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Institutional Repository.

Originally published in 1972 by professor emeritus Job Kuijt, the first edition of the book identified over 120 local plants and included short descriptions and simple line drawings for each plant, organized by flower colour.

The 2nd edition of Common Coulee Plants includes several updates, such as a new electronic format and current scientific plant names to accompany the familiar common names. Colour photographs, taken by author, photographer and botanist Flanagan, appear alongside the existing line drawings and can be enlarged to reveal greater detail, which is extremely useful for plant identification.

The EPUB format of the book offers many advantages to typical print including ease of navigation, an interactive table of contents and hyperlinked lists of plants arranged by flowering time or colour for efficient cross referencing.

“The book can be loaded on your cell phone or tablet and therefore takes up little or no additional space when you head out on the coulees to check out the spring flora,” says Bain.

EPUB files can be read using many common software applications including Google Books, iBooks, Overdrive and web browser plug-ins, however a .pdf file is also available through the Institutional Repository.

A look at the page featuring the great blanketflower.

Managed by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library, the Institutional Repository is a secure space for scholarly output such as articles, books, book chapters, statistics or numerical data, photos and more. Items in the repository are freely accessible to the public and searchable in various locations including the library catalogue and Google, which increases both visibility and discoverability.

"Since the content in institutional repositories is freely available as part of the Open Access movement, depositing scholarly output in a repository contributes to the global free flow of information,” adds librarian Marinus Swanepoel.

Already viewed/downloaded over 200 times, a launch celebration for Common Coulee Plants of Southern Alberta will take place in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library on Tuesday, April 15 at 3 p.m. on level 10.

For information about depositing your scholarly output into the U of L Institutional Repository contact your subject librarian or email library.irepository@uleth.ca

Library brings Herbarium to life

trevor.kenney — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:40:58 +0000

For more than 30 years, botanists and botany students have been visiting the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge to study a unique collection of more than 20,000 preserved plant specimens from Waterton Lakes National Park and environs. Now, thanks to a partnership between Herbarium collection curator Dr. John Bain in the Department of Biological Sciences and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Library, these invaluable specimens have been digitized and will soon be widely available via the Internet.

The majority of the Herbarium's specimens date from the 1970s and 1980s.

"In 1982, former ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge professor Job Kuijt's A Flora of Waterton Lakes National Park was published – after which he deposited in the Herbarium all plant specimens he collected and pressed during his documentation of the flora," says Bain. "It was this abundant and diverse flora found in Waterton Lakes National Park that was, in part, the reason for the park's designation as a World Biosphere Reserve in 1979 and a World Heritage Site in 1995."

Unlike other materials the library has previously digitized, pressed plants pose a slightly different challenge due to their relative fragility and the fact that the specimens must remain on-site in the Herbarium. To facilitate the digitization process, specialized equipment was purchased and located in the Herbarium. Quinn Daviduck, a summer research assistant, was hired to create high-resolution digital images for each and every plant specimen in the collection.

The next step in the process is to catalogue and describe each specimen using appropriate metadata (e.g., locational data, flowering times, ecological and distribution data) in order for the content to be more effectively searched or browsed online.

"In undertaking this project," says Bain, "the library is ensuring that an important natural history collection housed at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge will join similar collections around the world in being widely accessible."

An official launch of the Herbarium Digital Collection was held on Monday, Dec. 19 at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Library.

For more information, contact Associate ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Librarian, Information Systems & Technical Services, Wendy Merkley at wendy.merkley@uleth.ca.

This story first appeared in the December 2011 issue of the Legend. If you'd like to see the full issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

UNews - Job Kuijt

Coulee plant publication a collaboration between library, faculty and community

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Library brings Herbarium to life

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