Mycology Included: J. Dustin Williams of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
Mycology Included: J. Dustin Williams of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation
J. Dustin Williams has been promoted to Assistant Director of The Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Williams holds BS degrees in English Language and Literature and in Computer Science (Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2008) and a Masters of Library & Information Science in Archival Studies (University of Pittsburgh, 2009). He began work at the Institute in 2013 after several years in other positions at Carnegie Mellon University. Most recently in Williams’s position as Digital Assets Administrator/Archivist, he managed the digitization of more than 450,000 pages of the Institute’s archival materials in a continuing effort. In this capacity he became a good friend of MSA and of several members by archiving digital materials of the Society and a number of personal files over the last four years.
Williams’s work has made many mycological items readily discoverable online. For example, all sorts of interesting tidbits are found when you search “mycology.” W.A. Archer, whose PhD was in Mycology (Kauffman, Michigan, 1925, and is listed in the genealogy Bob Gilbertson and I did many years ago), had a distinguished career, but one that drifted toward plant taxonomy, including service as director of the noted Nevada Indian Medicine Project. “Constantine J. Alexopoulos” reveals an unpublished manuscript (under a pseudonym) based on work for the Rubber Development Corporation in Amazonian Brazil during WWII. Search “fungi” for lists past exhibitions involving fungi, such as “Mrs. Gene Williamson: Ceramic Mushrooms and Other Fungi” 9 September – 31 December 1970. This show featured 91 items, lovely exacting creations hand modeled from nature. Use the link for the checklist of art exhibited in “The Mysterious Nature of Fungi” in 2015. One digitized fungal resource recommended by Williams is the library’s unique copy of Sterbeeck’s Theatrum Fungorum (1675) that contains water-colored copies bound together with the volume’s uncolored engraved plates. On a personal note, I was surprised that one of my earliest photographs as a mycologist is in the Hunt’s extensive collection of photographs.
Meredith Blackwell