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Seeing Plants Library Portal: Welcome

Welcome

Welcome to the Seeing Plants library portal. The portal provides quick links to the resources you need to succeed in your course. Whether you are online or on-Grounds, UVA Library services and support are available to all students. 

Your Librarian

Your Librarian is Rebecca Coleman

Photograph of a woman with short hair wearing dark glasses.Each school/department at UVA is assigned a research librarian. Connect with Rebecca for help with your assignments. This service is available to all students, and meeting with a librarian early in your research process can help you save time and get a better grade.

Rebecca can help with: refining your topic, gathering research, finding images and site documentation, locating maps and data, organizing your research, citations, and more! She can meet with you in-person or online via Zoom.

Helpful Search Terms

 

  • Botanical Illustration
  • Botanical Drawing
  • Flowers in Art
  • Herbaria
  • Botanical Specimins -- Collection and Preservation

Search Virgo

Virgo is the Library catalog, where you can find books, articles, and more. 

Items in UVA Special Collections

UVA's Library owns a number of items that contain botanical illustrations, preserved plants, or herbaria.  Very few of these have been digitized at this time.  Here is a list of items that have relevant terms or descriptions that indicate that they may be of interest.  
 

This is not an exhaustive list!  If you find a book mentioned elsewhere, search Virgo to see if we have a copy.  Also, keep in mind that many older works may be out of copyright and digitized on the web.  Trying to hunt down something in particular?  Ask a librarian!

Request content any time

Ask a Librarian

Databases and Web Resources

Search for academic resources

Academic databases contain peer-reviewed articles, images, reports, news, and more. These are the most used databases for landscape architecture research.

Reference Resources

Reference resources include dictionaries, encyclopedias and other sources that offer access to factual information. Many of these resources are deeply focused on particular subjects, which can help you to find the appropriate definition for a particular discipline or time period.

Locate more resources by program or topic

Help me with citations

Different disciplines use different styles of citation. Please check to determine which style is right for your course and assignment. Remember that citations are important for crediting ideas, designs, data sources, image creators, and more.

Download library apps and software

Google Tips & Tricks

These tips can help you locate better information on the web, faster.  But remember- a lot of information is not freely available on the web, no matter how well you search!  

  • Put quotation marks around words that you want to stick together as a phrase
  • Add "site:.gov" to the end of your search to ONLY search websites on government domains
  • Add "site:website.com" to search only the content of a specific site (for example: charlottesville.org!)
  • Add "filetype:pdf" to ONLY search for information you think is likely to be in PDF format (reports, documents, etc.)
  • Use the minus sign or dash to eliminate results that are off target (Example:  food system -digestive)
  • Remember that Google is only a computer, and doesn't understand the concepts in your search.  So, try your search using different keywords and phrases that mean the same thing.