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From the Archives: The Hidden Work Behind the Garden
By Hannah Barton, Archivist
As a member or visitor at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, you are likely very familiar with our grounds and the tremendous care that goes into maintaining this living museum. But did you know we also have a wealth of behind-the-scenes digital assets, such as photos and plant records? The Garden staff manage and curate these assets to aid in the important work we do on and off the grounds.
There is an incredible amount of time and effort that goes into maintaining these digital collections, and much of this work would not have been possible without federal funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Empowering Growth Through Federal Funding
The IMLS was founded in 1996 as an independent federal agency with the mission to support and empower museums and libraries across the country. Through grant-making, the IMLS supplies funding on an annual basis to institutions like the Garden that demonstrate a need to advance collections development and access, as well as champion lifelong learning and strengthen community engagement.
The IMLS has been, up until recently, the primary source of federal funding of education and access programs for museums and libraries across the country. The Garden has been the lucky recipient of several grants from the IMLS over the last 20 years, which have been instrumental in developing educational programs, safeguarding our collections, and maintaining our plant records database.
The Garden’s History of IMLS Support
2005: The Garden received a $139,762 grant to fund educational materials and teacher training for the Lake Casitas Watershed Education Program, educating children in grades four through six about the importance of watershed ecology, the productive nature of watersheds, and associated crucial environmental issues.
2008 to 2011: In August 2008, the Garden, in partnership with the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, was awarded a two-year grant of nearly $150,000 from the IMLS. Recognizing that the Library’s important collection of historic photographs was vulnerable to loss or damage, insufficiently cataloged, and un- derused, the IMLS supported our endeavor to digitize the collection and create a custom online database and gallery to properly catalog and efficiently access the images.
During the grant period, Garden staff and volunteers digitized tens of thousands of slides, photographs, and negatives, as well as processed a growing collection of born-digital photography, and continued to expand the database as the years went on.
2010: The Garden was awarded a two-year grant from the IMLS of nearly $150,000 to map the trees and shrubs in living collections using GIS technology. Before this project, planting locations were recorded only as being within a 50x50 foot (15x15 meter) grid, which made individual plants difficult to locate.
2021 to 2023: The IMLS funding helped us to hire for the role of living collections curator and modernize our plant records database.
Building Our New Digital Archive
Most recently, in August 2024, the Garden was awarded a three-year grant from the IMLS to develop a new digital asset management system with the aim of making our educational and archival resources available on demand and free of charge to everyone. This tool will provide public access to the Garden’s extensive archive of tens of thousands of native plant photos, 20 oral histories of the Garden and its surroundings, and Garden publications, such as Dara E. Emery’s “Seed Propagation of Native California Plants” and past issues of Ironwood. Receiving such an award from the IMLS is an incredible honor and will further the Garden’s mission by connecting the public with 100 years of botanical expertise through this new web-based interface. Unfortunately, a wrench has been thrown into the works. The Garden has just received a termination of award letter, due to the current administration’s recent dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
For the last eight months, the Garden staff have been working internally and with partners to develop the infrastructure to support our new Digital Archive. At the time of this writing, we have almost completed our website and backend systems development. However, the loss of funding to this project means that we may not be able to maintain any updates to the existing framework, jeopardizing the public accessibility of the system and its contents. The Garden is fortunate to have a committed team of staff, Board of Trustees, and supporters like you who will help us weather this challenging period. Now more than ever, your support of small, mission-driven nonprofits that align with your values means that projects like ours can have a lasting impact on our community now and into the future. If you are looking for other ways to get involved, it is vital that we raise awareness about how decisions made at the federal level are affecting local organizations’ abilities to meet their missions, and we encourage you to contact your elected officials if you are concerned with these activities.
