Bryology book collection dates from the 1700s

Storrs Olson, the donor, delivering the 2007 Secretary's Distinguished Research Lecture at the Smithsonian, where he is a senior scientist and curator in charge of the Division of Birds.

A paleo-ornithologist who is a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution has donated his personal collection of books about mosses to the Biological Research Collections in CLAS.

Storrs L. Olson, the donor, assembled more than 1,000 books, journals, and reprints in the field of bryology, the study of mosses, liverworts, and hornworts.

The donation, which includes books dating from the 1700s, gives the Biological Research Collections at UConn one of the most comprehensive libraries on mosses in the nation and one of the top-ranked libraries in the entire field of bryology, says Bernard Goffinet, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

It includes one of only 251 copies in the world of a 1741 book, Historia Muscorum , as well as books from the 1800s that are housed in velvet boxes, books with delicate pressed mosses on their pages, and current books.

The collection completes a set of Revue Bryologique from 1874 on, building on an earlier donation by a former Duke professor, the late Lewis Anderson. It includes a set of The Bryologist , the oldest North American journal in the field, from 1898.

"It is an incredible resource for us," says Goffinet, "--a very inspiring collection of great books in the field."

The field itself has long attracted knowledgeable amateur naturalists. In the collection is a classic from 1906, Mosses with a Hand Lens , a book for amateur collectors by Abel Grout, a "grandfather" in the field of North American bryology, says Goffinet.

The hand lens of moss hunters has helped amateurs and scientists identify new species, but it also has sharpened insights into evolution and biodiversity.

"These organisms are shown to be the closest relatives of the earliest land plants," says Goffinet.

Books in the collection offer researchers ready access to literature that is often unavailable by loan or from the Internet. The detailed descriptions in books from the 1800s and early 1900s are invaluable to scientists today, Goffinet says.

The collection has books by people who were contemporaries of Charles Darwin and some who knew Darwin .

It even includes a novel with the name of a moss as its title: Ulota , by W.R. Megaw, published in 1934 in Belfast.

Olson, the donor, first became interested in mosses in 1966 when he was a senior biology major at Florida State University .

Olson went on to earn a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University . His career has focused on the study of fossil birds and island ecosystems. He is now the curator in charge of the Division of Birds at the Smithsonian.

Bernard Goffinet with the collection Photo by Frank Dahlmeyer

During fieldwork in Hawaii to collect fossil birds, he met the only local bryologist in Hawaii , William Hoe.

"Bill was an avid, almost fanatical, collector of bryological publications and had collected a very extensive library himself over a couple of decades or more," says Olson.

When Hoe died suddenly, his collection was passed along to his nephew, and Olson was able to purchase the bryological books.

About three years ago, he moved from Arlington to smaller quarters in Fredericksburg . He decided that was the time to fulfill his longstanding plan to donate the collection.

Goffinet, the only bryologist at UConn, heard about Olson's plan and wrote to him about research that he was doing in Chile, where mosses are prevalent and diverse. Olson had considered giving his collection to Chile but decided to donate the collection here instead.

"He wanted to see the library being used by students in the field," Goffinet says.