On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA June - July 2017 | Page 18

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y
N A N C Y TAY LO R R O B S O N
Sustaining Our Knowledge Base
Paper, digital and seed libraries: Vital options in the
quest for permanent reference resources
The Ancient Library
of Alexandria, Egypt,
which was probably
the first major informa-
tion repository in the
Western world, lasted
for 300-plus years. It
was destroyed by fire in
48 B.C. that took with it
from tens to hundreds
of thousands of papyrus scrolls, together with
the cultural and scientific knowledge they
contained.
As a species, humans build on accumulated
knowledge. To that end, we try to create sustain-
able, accessible and trustworthy storehouses for
that collective knowledge.
R E D U C I N G T H E R I S K O F LO S S
I S I M P O R TA N T
Papyrus, parchment and paper burn. Fac-
tions, war and natural disasters destroy archives
while digital systems can crash. It’s all at risk one
way or another. Retaining factual information
depends on how we gather, verify and store
it. But being able to use it is just as important
as preserving it. For example, preserving the
wealth of genetic information available in seeds
depends on saving plants from extinction and
making sure their seeds remain viable. The
Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway and some
1,700 other seed banks around the globe were
established to do just that.
“By some estimates, we’ve lost 60 to 70
percent of our cultivated plants over time,” said
John Torgrimson, executive director of Seed
Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, which sends
seed to Svalbard and regularly tests seed for
continued viability. “We’re pretty sure there
were once 20,000 varieties of North American
apples, and now there are about 4,000.”
This varietal loss might not sound important
until we remember that the bulk of the phar-
maceuticals we depend on originate in nature,
and that we make new (and appealingly weird)
18
Adam’s Pearmain apple, an old-fashioned, dessert
apple introduced in England in 1826, has a sweet,
slightly nutty flavor. Scab-resistant Cranberry Pippin apple, which
dates back from 1845, originated near Hudson,
in Columbia County, New York.
discoveries each year. For example, scientists
have recently learned that Komodo dragon
blood contains a potential antibiotic. per,” said Kirk Brown, John Bartram enactor and
lecturer. “You can’t burn books as easily as you
can pull the plug on a digital media (platform).”
Digital media is also hackable and mutable in
a way that paper is not. Without documents, we
would not have the Bartrams’ detailed lists of
plants native to this continent, which would be
an informational loss of both the benefits those
plants offer and the self-sustaining ecology
they represent. To truly sustain information, we
need it all. Diversity is backup. Monoculture and
monolithic systems are far more susceptible to
catastrophic destruction than a diverse, even
diffuse system.
“The Alexandria Library lost all its information
because it was all in one place,” noted Kathy
Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener magazine.
EPHEMERA FILL IN THE BLANKS
Sustaining verifiable and accessible infor-
mation of all kinds is a multifaceted enterprise.
It depends on many people, including those
who hold onto the kind of ephemera that often
gets chucked out such as old letters and diaries.
These tidbits, such as Thomas Jefferson’s garden
books and John and William Bartram’s extensive
botanical research, help to inform us of gradual
changes in the natural world.
“The strongest body of supporting evidence
that I use for most of my lectures and all of the
interpretations I do goes back to words on pa-