| Fall/Winter 1996 | Smithsonian Institution Libraries | page 6 |
The Dibner Fund
The Dibner Fund has supported an annual Dibner Library Lecture since 1992 as well as two scholars annually in the SIL/Dibner Library Resident Scholar Program. Ten researchers have already benefitted from the scholar program. The Dibner Fund also contributed to the publishing costs of Rare Books and Special Collections in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (1995). David Dibner is President of The Dibner Fund and Frances K. Dibner is Vice President.
Dibner Library Lecture
The 1996 Dibner Library Lecture honored both James Smithson, mineralogist and benefactor of the Institution, and Bern Dibner, whose collection of books has been used by researchers for the past twenty years in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology. The speaker, Robert M. Hazen, an Earth Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysics Laboratory and a Robinson Professor at George Mason University, delivered the lecture on September 25 to a gathering of some 50 people. His topic, "Earth Sciences, Unanswered Questions, and the Dibner Legacy" addressed the issue of the importance of basic scientific research and the role of libraries as keepers of scientific information. A number of undergraduate students from George Mason University were in the audience.
Hazen earned his Ph.D. at Harvard in Earth Sciences and his Master's at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on relationships between atomic structure and physical properties of materials, and he has won awards and prizes for his contributions. His interests and published studies (13 books and some 200 articles) range across several disciplines, and he has explored ties between technology and culture in books co-authored with his wife, Margaret Hindle Hazen.
The Libraries was pleased to accept a donation of books from Professor Hazen, a collection of pre-1850 printed American works on coal and other fossil fuels, as well as several mid-19th-century works on mineral springs in New York and West Virginia.
Design Award
The Libraries' Rare Books and Special Collections in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (1995) won a design award from the Washington Chapter of the American Institute for Graphic Arts. Designed by Robert Wiser of Archetype Press, the book is one of 50 selected by judges from a field of 573 entries in the 5th Biennial AIGA 50 design competition. The award-winning books will be displayed in an exhibition at the Gallery of the Octagon House, headquarters of the American Institute of Architects, in April 1997, and included in the AIGA 50 catalog.
With 61 illustrations, 47 in color, the 108-page book is a visual review of the valuable and unusual material in the Libraries' Special Collections. Bern Dibner, whose collection of books and manuscripts was donated to the Institution in 1976, is honored in the frontispiece. Sample images featured are the 1886 handbook to the Smithsonian's National Museum, rare 15th-19th century books on shells, insects, herbs, and scientific collecting manuals, a publication in a Native American language, and illustrations from SIL's world-renowned trade catalog and world's fair collections.
Support for the book was provided by The Dibner Fund.
This Libraries' publication sells for $19.95 and can be ordered from the Smithsonian Institution Press (call 800-782-4612 to order).