For Mushroom Experts, One Good Donation Inspires Another

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A leading expert in the study of mushrooms and other fungi is donating his collection of books and slides to the department of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Alan Bessette said he was inspired by an earlier gift from another well-known mycologist.

Emily Johnson, an amateur mycologist from Pennsylvania, spent more than 30 years photographing mushrooms. In February 2004, she donated her slide collection to the University of Arkansas, largely because she had known and worked with Steve Stephenson, a research professor in the biological sciences department at Fulbright College. Her donation of approximately 10,000 slides was valued at $100,000.

That donation was well-publicized in the community of mycologists, which consists of amateurs as well as scientists who study fungi. Alan Bessette was on the faculty of Utica College in New York at the time, but a few years later, when he was about to retire, he remembered Johnson’s donation. He got in touch with Stephenson. The two men were familiar with each other’s work but they had never met.

“Alan Bessette has written a number of books on mushrooms, some of which are fairly technical, but most are directed toward amateur mycologists and can be considered as field guides that allow readers to identify a particular mushroom. The actual number of different field guides he has produced exceeds that of any other author of whom I am aware,” said Stephenson, who has written two field guides himself. In fact, Stephenson has used several of Bessette’s field guides in various mushroom workshops he conducted and as supplementary texts in his mycology course.

Besette decided to donate his entire collection of books and slides to the University of Arkansas, so they can be maintained and made available as a long-term resource in mycology. His donation is valued at $75,000.

Bessette’s collection of approximately 400 books on mycology will serve as the nucleus of a departmental library to be developed in the biological sciences department. The books cover virtually every area of mycology, including many volumes that are now out of print. The more than 4,000 slides will be added to the 10,000 already donated by Emily Johnson and placed in permanent storage in the library. The slides include images of most of the different types of mushrooms and other fungi in eastern North America, along with a series of images of various lichens. Some of the mushroom images will appear in a forthcoming book on the macrofungi associated with oak trees in the forests of eastern North America.

An effort is currently under way to scan many of the slides and place them on a Web site (http://mushroom.uark.edu/) that provides information on a number of different aspects of mycology.