The Pilot: The Bartrams' Florida

Bartrams' Florida is designed as a pilot to the larger Roving Naturalists project described below.  As a digital nexus of Bartram writings, illustrations, discoveries, and associated historical and environmental information, it is intended to show the types of enhancements that can be made to historical natural history topics.  The ability to search full texts, to zoom in and out of maps, and hyperlink text and maps heralds a new horizon in digital resource creation.  

Francis Harper's 1944 editing of John and William Bartrams' journals and letters set the bedrock for interpreting their travels and forms the basis of the digital resource presented here.   

Indebted to his labors, we are seeking collaborators to help us further enhance the Bartrams' Florida pilot and to create the Roving Naturalists resource.  If you would like to participate, please contact:  

Stephanie Haas, Assistant Director
Digital Library Center
University of Florida Libraries
P.O Box 117003
Gainesville, FL  32611-7007.  
email: haas@mail.uflib.ufl.edu  phone: (352)846-0129

The Project: Roving Naturalists: On the Bartram Trail, 1765-1822 

Roving Naturalists is a project designed to electronically link diverse information formats throughout the United States and Western Europe into a “virtual” collection on early naturalists’ travel through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. 

As the King’s Botanist, John Bartram’s travel in 1765 established a route traversed by the most notable foreign and native naturalists in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries.   According to Francis Harper, “Bartram was probably the first botanist to examine and report on the flora of Florida and the greater part of Georgia.  In South Carolina he had apparently been preceded only by Mark Catesby and Dr. Alexander Garden.”  Each of the men to follow Bartram, including his  son William, added to the knowledge of the new lands, the native cultures, and “the Wonderful Creatures of this New World.” 

This project will integrate the life and times of the roving naturalists based on their journals and written accounts.  These texts will be fully searchable by dates, names, and places.  Through a portal to distributed Web sites, Roving Naturalists will offer glimpses of the specimens and artifacts collected and the cultures, climates, and creatures the early naturalists encountered.  Interactive GIS technology will be used to compare their early mapping endeavors to the sophisticated geospatial analyses of the 21^st century.

The products that will result from Roving Naturalists include:

1.  An online searchable database to the written records of the naturalists will provide access to the full text of their journals and publications.  Included in this database will be references to the naturalists and their works and links to appropriate Web sites.  
   Note: The Pilot uses LizardTech DjVu OCR'd images; the full Roving Naturalists project will use the full text functionality provided by the Florida Center for Library Automation.

2. An online searchable inventory of the specimens collected during their journeys and where possible a digital image of the specimens linked into the text of their journals and letters.

3. An interactive mapping odyssey that will allow the user to overlay the various routes taken by the naturalists with layers related to vegetation, native peoples, and botanical and biological distributions.   From base route maps, users will be able to select specified sites and find additional information on cultural artifacts, botanical and biological specimens, and multimedia presentations related to the naturalists and the environs.

4. Generalized educational modules meeting the K-12 state educational requirements for will be compiled from the resources and online student activities and teachers’ guides will be created for Pennsylvania (Bartram's home state,) and North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida (the Southern states he explored.)   Similar curricular materials  are available at  "Linking Florida's Natural Heritage."

5. Essays on each naturalist’s role in his own country, his contribution to the fledgling science of natural history and taxonomy, and the enhancement or revision of the Bartrams’ published reports which resulted from the later exploration will be written by eminent science historians.

6. Roving Naturalist travel packs will be created in a CD format that can be used in the latest model automobile car video/audio CD players to provide on the road travel guides or in classrooms providing a virtual field trip experience. 

The preliminary list of naturalists selected for inclusion are:  
John and William Bartram, Mark Catesby, Alexander Garden, Thomas Walter, Johann David Schoepf (German), Luigi Castiglioni (Italy), Andre Michaux (France), Luis Augustin Guillaume Bosc (France), John Abbot, Alexander Wilson, William Baldwin, Thomas Nuttall, William Maclure, Thomas Say, George Ord, Titian R. Peale, Stephen Elliott, and John Eatton Le Conte.   

Proposed partners in this endeavor include: 
the American Philosophical Society; Philadelphia Academy of Sciences; Georgia Department of Archives and History; South Carolina Department of Archives and History; North Carolina Division of Archives and History; Florida State Archives; the Special Collections Departments of North Carolina State, University of South Carolina, University of Georgia, and the University of Florida; Paris Museum, the British Museum; National Archives and Records Administration, and the Smithsonian Institution.