Grant Helps Butler's Friesner Herbarium Put Plants Online
More than 1,900 specimens of ferns and orchids that grow in Indiana can now be seen and studied online, thanks to an $8,000 grant Butler University received from the Indiana State Library.
The digital images, along with specific information on each plant, are available here. The plants are part of the collection in Butler’s Friesner Herbarium, which houses specimens from more than 43,000 Indiana plants as well as 55,000 samples from elsewhere. (Herbaria are systemic collections of pressed and dried plants with labels that document who collected them, when, and where. The focus of the Friesner Herbarium is plants that grow outside of cultivation.)
The University will publicly unveil the project at 3 p.m. Aug. 18 at Irwin Library. The event is free and open to the public.
“The idea is that hopefully, having this information available will make more people aware of the collection and its historical value,” said Rebecca Dolan, director of the Friesner Herbarium. “And as people are interested in the history of a county, they can look back at our records. Many of our specimens were collected in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, before there was a lot of development in most of the state.”
Digitizing the first 1,900 specimens began a year ago as a joint project between the Herbarium and the Irwin Library. Lewis Miller, dean of the libraries, was the principal investigator on the grant. Butler partnered with IUPUI’s library to photograph the plants, then linked the images with data from each specimen. Irwin Library Catalog Librarian Janice Gustaferro entered the pictures and information into a searchable database.
Dolan said the process went so well that a second grant – this time $20,000 – will enable the University to digitize another 6,400 specimens from the sunflower/daisy family.
“The ultimate goal would be to get all 43,000 Indiana specimens digitized so people don’t have to come here to see the specimens,” she said.
The herbarium’s collection is kept in folders inside lockers that protect the specimens from light, water and insects. Dolan said the plants are useful in a variety of ways – for professional botanists interested in species distributions; for students and teachers studying Indiana natural history; for people trying to establish historical landscapes; for people interested in the spread of non-native plants.
The project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Indiana State Library.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. Its mission is to grow and sustain a “nation of learners,” because lifelong learning is essential to a democratic society and individual success. Through its grant making, convenings, research and publications, the institute empowers museums and libraries nationwide to provide leadership and services to enhance learning in families and communities, sustain cultural heritage, build 21st century skills and increase civic participation. More information is available at www.imls.gov<http://www.imls.gov>.
The Butler University Year book Online
So in lamenting Pitt's annual early exit from the NCAA tourney I felt obligated to look into Butler University because I have no idea who Butler is, where they are from and why they have to stir up trouble for the basketball powers that be.
While my main passion is college football, I graduated from Pitt so, of course, I love Pitt's basketball team unconditionally as well.
Needless to say I was disappointed by Butler's 71-70 dismissal of Pittsburgh.
After the game I had to look up a little bit about Butler. How many scholarships do they have?.. What conference do they play in?.. Do they have a Div. 1 football team?
Ultimately, I was convinced enough that Butler is an actual college, so I entered "Butler University Yearbooks" into the search bar and I was surprised to see that Butler University has their yearbooks posted online.
The yearbooks have had several names over the years, The Carillon, The Gallery and the name the yearbook started with and has come back to time and time again: The Drift.
The earliest yearbook Butler has available online is from way back in 1891, and butler boasted a solid football team even way back then.
One of the interesting things regarding any early yearbook the occasional bias exhibited by student writers.
I particularly liked this page from the 1891 Drift where the writer directly refutes a score on account of the ref not knowing the rules.
That is definitely a possibility in those early days- especially considering that there were two sets of rules committees even as late as 1896, but I have found no evidence thus far to suggest that Butler was robbed of 16 points vs Hanover and lost the 1887 Indiana state championship as a result.
So while these texts can certainly offer us some more clarity on football's salad days - the accounts can be biased and may raise as many new questions as they answer.
In all, this is another great surprise addition to the yearbooks collection. This one was produced by the Internet Archive and looks great, is easy to use and is keyword searchable. Pitt's loss to Butler in the round of 32 was hard to swallow, but at least I found this one positive in another painful Pitt tournament loss.
Barry Bonds jury: lukewarm on baseball and BALCO
For all the worry about hype on the Internet, lawyers in the perjury trial of home run king Barry Bonds selected a jury Monday that is ambivalent about the former Giants superstar and relatively oblivious to the BALCO steroids scandal.
It is a panel with a few baseball fans, just a couple who favor the San Francisco Giants, but no one who would paint their faces black and orange. Most chosen said they had no opinion at all about Bonds, and scant exposure to BALCO, the defunct Peninsula lab linked to peddling performance-enhancing drugs to a wide range of professional athletes, from Olympians to baseball players.
Despite all the hoopla surrounding the trial, one juror, a Martinez woman, wrote of the Bonds and BALCO topic: "Today is the first I've heard anything at all." She was picked to consider Bonds' fate.
Bonds' trial gets under way Tuesday with opening statements and the first witnesses, and he will be judged by a jury of eight women and four men, many of whom are East Bay residents, with a few from Marin and San Francisco. The two alternates are women. The jury also is predominantly white; two of the 12 seated jurors are African-American women.
Bonds, who arrived in court Monday with his mother, friends, family and bodyguards, faces three counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury in December 2003 about using steroids. He will get his first glimpse at the government's
witnesses Tuesday, although the first witness will be his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who is expected to continue to refuse to testify and be jailed immediately for contempt by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
After Anderson, the government is expected to call Jeff Novitzky, the lead federal agent who uncovered the BALCO scandal. The next witness is scheduled to be Steve Hoskins, a former Bonds associate who tape-recorded a conversation with Anderson in the Giants locker room in 2003.
Much of the government's case against Bonds rests on the theory that Bonds lied about obtaining steroids from Anderson, who is accused of supplying them to the former Giants slugger and other ballplayers through BALCO. Bonds, 46, has denied knowingly taking steroids as he chased baseball's home run records.
Illston and the lawyers on both sides of the case spent Monday trying to sort through dozens of potential jurors, all of whom filled out lengthy questionnaires giving their views on everything from Bonds and steroids to whether they are baseball fans or have a bias against the government. The answers on the questionnaires ruled out a large number of the potential jurors from the start, and others were dismissed after being grilled in open court.
That included one former flight attendant who remarked that she is "still recovering" from working on charter flights for baseball teams early in her career, and a San Francisco man who confessed he'd have a hard time sitting on the jury and rendering "a judgment against a great athlete like Mr. Bonds."
The judge and lawyers stressed in jury selection that the case, despite its dramatic connection to steroids and baseball, centers on allegations about lying under oath to a grand jury. "You must decide the case on the evidence presented at trial," Illston told the potential jurors. "You will not be asked to decide whether you like or don't like steroids."
Many of the questions from the judge and lawyers also focused on how much pretrial publicity might have colored the views of potential jurors, taking repeated jabs at the accuracy of media accounts about the case.
But in the end, it appears all sides found jurors who have not been immersed in the eight-year legal Odyssey surrounding Bonds and BALCO. Said one juror who was chosen, a 19-year-old college student from Pinole, "My lack of interest helped me with no other knowledge regarding the proven truth."
The jury is a cross-section of ages and professions, including an engineer, two nurses, an investment firm executive and a phlebotomist, a technician trained to draw blood. On their jury questionnaires, most said they had "no opinion" about Bonds. One juror, an Antioch man, did say he has a "favorable" opinion about Bonds and is a baseball fan. But another juror, a Sonoma woman and perhaps the biggest Giants fan on the jury, said she had an "unfavorable" opinion about him.
Once the jury was selected, Illston gave them strict instructions about insulating themselves against any information about the trial, including staying away from Facebook, Google, Twitter or blogs. Earlier, in jury selection, Cristina Arguedas, one of Bonds' lawyers, asked anyone to raise their hands if they believe "we're in the age of Google," highlighting worriers about steering clear of outside information.
They all raised their hands. And one potential juror, who was later dismissed, said there would be no way to avoid the topic.
"It's impossible," he said. "I was in the grocery store last week, and two people in front of me, it's all they were talking about."
Contact Howard Mintz at hmintz@mercurynews.com or 408-286-0236.
It is a panel with a few baseball fans, just a couple who favor the San Francisco Giants, but no one who would paint their faces black and orange. Most chosen said they had no opinion at all about Bonds, and scant exposure to BALCO, the defunct Peninsula lab linked to peddling performance-enhancing drugs to a wide range of professional athletes, from Olympians to baseball players.
Despite all the hoopla surrounding the trial, one juror, a Martinez woman, wrote of the Bonds and BALCO topic: "Today is the first I've heard anything at all." She was picked to consider Bonds' fate.
Bonds' trial gets under way Tuesday with opening statements and the first witnesses, and he will be judged by a jury of eight women and four men, many of whom are East Bay residents, with a few from Marin and San Francisco. The two alternates are women. The jury also is predominantly white; two of the 12 seated jurors are African-American women.
Bonds, who arrived in court Monday with his mother, friends, family and bodyguards, faces three counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury in December 2003 about using steroids. He will get his first glimpse at the government's
witnesses Tuesday, although the first witness will be his former personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who is expected to continue to refuse to testify and be jailed immediately for contempt by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston.
After Anderson, the government is expected to call Jeff Novitzky, the lead federal agent who uncovered the BALCO scandal. The next witness is scheduled to be Steve Hoskins, a former Bonds associate who tape-recorded a conversation with Anderson in the Giants locker room in 2003.
Much of the government's case against Bonds rests on the theory that Bonds lied about obtaining steroids from Anderson, who is accused of supplying them to the former Giants slugger and other ballplayers through BALCO. Bonds, 46, has denied knowingly taking steroids as he chased baseball's home run records.
Illston and the lawyers on both sides of the case spent Monday trying to sort through dozens of potential jurors, all of whom filled out lengthy questionnaires giving their views on everything from Bonds and steroids to whether they are baseball fans or have a bias against the government. The answers on the questionnaires ruled out a large number of the potential jurors from the start, and others were dismissed after being grilled in open court.
That included one former flight attendant who remarked that she is "still recovering" from working on charter flights for baseball teams early in her career, and a San Francisco man who confessed he'd have a hard time sitting on the jury and rendering "a judgment against a great athlete like Mr. Bonds."
The judge and lawyers stressed in jury selection that the case, despite its dramatic connection to steroids and baseball, centers on allegations about lying under oath to a grand jury. "You must decide the case on the evidence presented at trial," Illston told the potential jurors. "You will not be asked to decide whether you like or don't like steroids."
Many of the questions from the judge and lawyers also focused on how much pretrial publicity might have colored the views of potential jurors, taking repeated jabs at the accuracy of media accounts about the case.
But in the end, it appears all sides found jurors who have not been immersed in the eight-year legal Odyssey surrounding Bonds and BALCO. Said one juror who was chosen, a 19-year-old college student from Pinole, "My lack of interest helped me with no other knowledge regarding the proven truth."
The jury is a cross-section of ages and professions, including an engineer, two nurses, an investment firm executive and a phlebotomist, a technician trained to draw blood. On their jury questionnaires, most said they had "no opinion" about Bonds. One juror, an Antioch man, did say he has a "favorable" opinion about Bonds and is a baseball fan. But another juror, a Sonoma woman and perhaps the biggest Giants fan on the jury, said she had an "unfavorable" opinion about him.
Once the jury was selected, Illston gave them strict instructions about insulating themselves against any information about the trial, including staying away from Facebook, Google, Twitter or blogs. Earlier, in jury selection, Cristina Arguedas, one of Bonds' lawyers, asked anyone to raise their hands if they believe "we're in the age of Google," highlighting worriers about steering clear of outside information.
They all raised their hands. And one potential juror, who was later dismissed, said there would be no way to avoid the topic.
"It's impossible," he said. "I was in the grocery store last week, and two people in front of me, it's all they were talking about."
Contact Howard Mintz at hmintz@mercurynews.com or 408-286-0236.
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