Findings

My trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens last weekend was so great! The library director pulled material for me from their archives and had everything waiting for me in their rare books room. I spent two and a half hours pouring over Chicago Horticultural Society records, newspaper clippings and newsletters from the 1950s through the 1970s. I have a basic understanding of how the institution came together and a list of VIP who made it happen, but there were a couple of great nuggets that I think could be connected to large historical issues. For example, the horticultural society had to fund a dam to divert water from their property that was polluted and purchase water from Northbrook and another suburb. Also, how significant to the chosen location of the garden is the fact that the majority of members were from the northern suburbs?

I had a really interesting conversation with Daniel Greene, the VP for research and academic programs at the Newberry Library today about my project and teasing out the issues of class--perhaps by bringing in the Missouri Botanical Garden into my analysis. I think class and place are both important themes to my project. Class, because a more affluent community's easier access to money can make projects happen faster (though there are always challenges and opportunities that accompany your status, high or low), and place, because the version of nature that is valued and created by a community is related to both its topography and culture. Keeping these larger issues in mind is critical as I continue to research, because they contribute to a framework for my argument that I can lean on when my source material gets overwhelming.

RESEARCH UPDATE

Just got off the phone with Library Director Leora Siegel about visiting the Chicago Botanic Garden archive. Leora green-lighted my visit for October 21 at 1o a.m.! I am very excited. This will just be preliminary findings trip to get a feel for the state of the archive and their holdings. In the mean time I'm going to have to talk with my advisor about what types of records I should be looking for and about coming up with a searchable list of topics. The CBG's archive is pretty rough, there isn't a finding aid yet and the topics are searchable via Excel (sigh, wouldn't it be cool if they hired me to catalog?), so I am going to have to spend some serious time there, which means I should be as organized as possible before I go.

I haven't been in an institutional archive in over a year, so I'm also going to try and ask other grad students around the department for tips and advice on prelim visits. Any words of wisdom are welcome!

Blogs and sources

While my research doesn't carry over into the 21st century when blogs become a common method for organizations to get the word out, looking at them does bring up questions about how botanic gardens have reached out to their audience in the past. Member newsletters and press releases (the main modes of reaching people) are still around today, but compared to blogs they seem much more institutionalized and formal, almost impersonal. It would be interesting to know how (or if) garden public relations made those personal connections. I've posted a couple of examples of garden blogs--some are more formal than others, but they all function as supplemental to e-newsletters and are updated weekly or bi-weekly with news and pictures.

Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden

I liked the LACABG's blog because it included a Blogroll of other related blogs and websites, this is kind of an old-school format for the blog world, but it was really helpful for me to have all of those websites in one place.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Blog

The BBG's blog is my favorite because it is very user-friendly and interfaces with twitter and facebook and is updated often, which may be because there is more than one contributor.

Chicago Botanic Garden Blog

The CBG's blog is high tech with videos, it's more like a garden TV channel that highlights different aspects of the garden and isn't necessarily the best place to get the newest news and happenings at the garden. It was also buried in the garden's website, which doesn't make it very accessible to viewers.