MBL and Woods Hole Oceanographic Renew Library Partnership | @MBLWHOI Library

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

@MBLScience-@WHOI handshake 87 years ago continues into the future as our MOU was renewed today - library service to Woods Hole science. pic.twitter.com/w9vt5aKU0M

— MBLWHOI Library (@MBLWHOILibrary) October 19, 2017

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

Of special interest is the MBLWHOI 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 Biodiversity Heritage Library and the History of MBL repository.

The MBL 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.