The Collection George F. Atkinson was an early pioneer in scientific photography, and took all the photographs in the Atkinson collection himself. He used large and medium format glass negatives. The Department of Plant Pathology has been fortunate to have employed several generations of departmental photographers whose works form the bulk of our collections: Willis R. Fisher, Howard H. Lyon, and Kent E. Loeffler. The sheer artistry of their scientific imagery is featured at Explore Cornell. Some work uses early color processes including dufaycolors and autochromes. Other photographs have been contributed by department members and friends of the Herbarium.
The Digital Files The photographs of the cornell Plant Pathology Herbarium have been scanned by a number of competent and dedicated people. Kent Loeffler, our beloved department photographer, has been the overseer and coordinator of the project, and scanned many photographs himself. Larissa Smith selected and scanned many photos from the main CUP collections, and created the initial data file. Larissa's work was funded by the Department of Plant Pathology. David LoParco scanned many Atkinson photographs in his spare time. Susan Switras Meyer scanned many of Atkinson's images of type specimens. Kent Loeffler and Ed Mackillop scanned the entire Thurston collection. Generous gifts from Professor Emeritus Wayne Sinclair provided the two generations of scanners used to digitize prints and negatives for this project.
The Web The original database was created in Filemaker Pro by Director Kathie Hodge, based on the original Word files created by Larissa Smith. The database was converted to MySQL by John Cline, a programmer/analyst at Cornell's Mann Library. John adapted the web user interface, and developed tools to simplify the handling of the digital files. This website was designed by John Cline and Kathie Hodge. The CUP logo was created by Susan Switras Meyer.
