Abstract Detail

Education and Outreach

Krakos, Kyra Neipp [1], Ashley, Buchanan [2].

Plant Humanities Lab: A cross-discipline education resource.

Humans rely on plants for our most fundamental individual and social needs: from food, medicine, and construction to our encounters with them in art and literature. Although we think of plants as rooted in place, their global travels over the millennia offer fascinating pathways into the past and illuminate some of the most burning issues of today, including legacies of colonial violence and displacement. Climate change, habitat loss, and accelerated species extinctions add to the urgency of researching plant–human interactions and acknowledging the importance of plants in our environment. The Plant Humanities Lab is an innovative digital space that supports the interdisciplinary study of plants from the various perspectives of the arts, sciences, and humanities, to explore their extraordinary significance to human culture. The Plant Humanities Lab has two components. The first is a set of plant narratives created using Juncture, a new, open-source tool developed by JSTOR Labs. Drawing on herbals, horticultural treatises, and albums of botanical illustrations from the Dumbarton Oaks rare book library and other special collections, the narratives are enhanced by digital elements such as annotated high-resolution images, network visualizations, and interactive maps. The second component is a search and resource discovery interface powered by Linked Open Data. The search interface presents a plant-oriented window into the wealth of data available in WikiData and related primary and secondary sources from vast repositories such as JSTOR Global Plants, JSTOR,, Artstor., and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

1 - Maryville University, Biology, 650 Maryville University, St Louis, MO, 63141, United States
2 - Folger Institute, Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street SE , Washington, DC, 20003, United States

Keywords:
Education
cross cultural education
multi-discipline teaching
ethnobotany
plant humanities
botanical libraries.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Number: EO2010
Abstract ID:657
Candidate for Awards:None