Botany: Libraries and Museums

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a world-renowned zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden, all in one place! Exhibits re-create the natural landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region so realistically you find yourself eye-to-eye with mountain lions, prairie dogs, Gila monsters, and more. Within the Museum grounds, you will see more than 300 animal species and 1,200 kinds of plants. There are almost 2 miles of paths traversing 21 acres of beautiful desert...The mission of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is to inspire people to live in harmony with the natural world by fostering love, appreciation, and understanding of the Sonoran Desert.

Provides research support for the Department of Botany, NMNH and Smithsonian Gardens, plus a large number of botanists world-wide, who use the collections and resources.

The Harvard University Herbaria house five comprehensive, non-circulating research libraries that are managed collectively as the Botany Libraries. The combined collections are rich repositories of rare books, manuscripts, field notes, and historical correspondence, as well as current monographs, journals and electronic media. The Libraries support the academic and research interests of the faculty, researchers, staff and students of the Harvard University Herbaria and are open to an international community of scholars.

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is part of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s preeminent museum and research complex. The Museum is dedicated to inspiring curiosity, discovery, and learning about the natural world through its unparalleled research, collections, exhibitions, and education outreach programs. The collections include 4½ million plants pressed onto sheets of paper in the Museum’s herbarium. Over 3½ million specimens are out on loan each year; over 15,000 visitor days are spent in the collections; and there are almost 600,000 additional visits to collection data bases available on the Web.

The Economic Botany Collection at Kew illustrates the extent of human use of plants around the world. The huge variety of objects ranges from artifacts made from plants, to raw plant materials, including a large collection of wood samples. Uses range from food, medicine and utensils, to social activities and clothing.

The Herb Society of America Library Collection includes nearly 3,000 volumes covering a wide array of topics related to herbs and gardening. Materials collected include books, periodicals, videos, pamphlets, slide programs, resource kits and rare books.

Kew's extensive library is one of the most important botanical reference sources in the world. Library, Art & Archives contains more than half a million items, including books, botanical illustrations, photographs, letters and manuscripts, periodicals, biographies and maps. During the 150 years of the library's history, material has been acquired by gift, purchase and exchange. Over 90 languages are represented, making the library a global resource for plant science, research and conservation.

The Library holds, acquires, preserves, and provides access to both historic and current books and journals, as well as archival materials, on a wide variety of disciplines that fall under the subjects of natural history, botany, pharmacy, and medicine.

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) provides technical information on agricultural research and related subjects to scientists, educators and farmers using computer databases; coordinates and is primary resource for national network of state land grant university and field libraries; and serves as the U.S. center for the international agriculture information system.

Spans a period from the 17th century to the present and holds an estimated six million specimens of bryophytes, ferns, seed plants and slime moulds from all over the world.

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden was founded in 1927 by Susanna Bixby Bryant in Santa Ana, CA and relocated to Claremont in 1951. Susanna’s personal collection is the foundation of the Research Library and was part of her original plan when the botanic garden began on her ranch in Santa Ana. Today, the Research Library contains approximately 48,000 volumes and 750 current journals and periodicals. Acquisitions increase yearly and include bound journals and periodicals.