Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection

Collection

Identifier: MS0120

Staff Only

Content Description

The Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection contains over 150,000 catalogs from nursery and seed companies in the United States and countries around the world. The catalogs contain information regarding sources, prices, and descriptions of plant material offered for sale by nurserymen, growers, and seedsmen. The bulk of the catalogs were published by U.S. companies. The collection was started in 1904 by Percy Leroy Ricker, an economic botanist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and is now named for its longtime curator, Henry G. Gilbert (1930-1996).

There are catalogs from the following countries: Africa, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Canary Islands, Ceylon, Chile, China, England, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, India, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Russia, Scotland, South America, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.

Dates

Creation: 1724-2013
Creation: Majority of material found within 1890-2003

Conditions Governing Access

Contact Special Collections for access.

Biographical Sketch

Henry G. Gilbert (1930-1996) was a reference librarian at the USDA National Agricultural Library (NAL). He worked at NAL for 27 years, beginning his tenure at the USDA's South Building in Washington, D.C., just prior to the library's move to Beltsville, Maryland. In addition to working in reference services, Gilbert was NAL's librarian for the U.S. National Arboretum and curator of the library's collection of nursery and seed trade catalogs. Gilbert earned an associate’s degree in horticulture from the State University of New York at Farmingdale, a bachelor’s degree in entomology from the University of Georgia, and a master’s degree in library science from the Pratt Institute in New York. Prior to becoming a librarian at NAL, Gilbert worked for various agricultural organizations, including the Port of New York, where he served as a USDA plant quarantine inspector.