Media contact: Anna Dahlstein, (919) 515-3585

The work of pioneer ecologist and NC State professor B. W. Wells is the focus of the first exhibition to be featured in the D. H. Hill Library?s new exhibition gallery. The story is told by the wealth of excellent photographs that Wells took to document his research. He converted four-by-five-inch negatives to glass lantern slides and hand-tinted many of them with watercolors. Throughout his career, he used these images to enlighten everyone he encountered on the importance of appreciating nature. The NCSU Libraries and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences have partnered to preserve, identify, digitize, and display these images.

Much of Wells? work focused on the ecologically unique Big Savannah located in Pender County, North Carolina. Although this landscape was forever lost to the plow in the late 1950s, the recent discovery of a similar site, dedicated as the B. W. Wells Savannah in 2002, created a renewed interest in the ecology of this region and the abundance of plants and flowers that are found there today. Photographer Freda Wilkins of Wilmington, North Carolina, has documented them for this exhibition.

The exhibition also displays Wells? publications, including his popular work, The Natural Gardens of North Carolina, which has been an invaluable resource for North Carolinians interested in the native flora of the state for over 75 years. Other highlights include his camera, botanical specimens, and original documents produced by Wells.

All of the photographs in the B. W. Wells Collection are available in the online exhibit on the NCSU Libraries? Web site. The images are also featured in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition, available for purchase from the NC State Bookstores.

This library?s new exhibit gallery is part of the recent renovations of the D. H. Hill Library, which now offers a state-of-the-art Learning Commons and a Special Collections Reading Room.