and Woods Hole Oceanographic Renew Library Partnership | @WHOI Library

Last week, () renewed its memorandum of understanding with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for their shared scientific library, the . Established at the in 1888 by scientist Cornelia Clapp, the Library began to collaborate on collections with WHOI when the latter was founded in 1930. Today, the WHOI Library houses one of the world’s foremost print and electronic literature collections in the biological, biomedical, ecological, and oceanographic sciences.

(L to R: Melina Hale, Interim Co-Director; David Mark Welch, Interim Director of Research; Mark Abbott, WHOI President and Director; James A. Yoder, WHOI Vice President for Academic Programs and Dean; and Jennifer Walton, WHOI Library Co-Director. (Not pictured: Lisa Raymond, WHOI Library Co-Director.)

Of special interest is the WHOI Library’s Rare Books Collection, which holds approximately 5,300 volumes of scientific books printed from the 16th through 20th century. They include an extensive collection of oceanic voyages and expeditions, a first edition of Newton’s Opticks (1704), and an early encyclopedia of animals from 1560. The collections are available to scholars onsite and significant portions are available to researchers around the world through two digital initiatives – the and the Dzٴǰ.

The Archives contain, in addition to institutional records, a collection of scientific papers, an extensive photographic collection dating back to the founding of the institution, and other unique items including two Nobel Prizes and a complete collection of Rudolf Leuckart’s Teaching Wall Charts.