By Jan Christoph Behrs, Scholarly Communications Librarian

The very first issue of Tulane Studies in Zoology, published on June 1, 1953, admittedly doesn’t look like much: It is only eight pages long, and the front page informs readers that copies could be purchased at Tulane’s Department of Zoology for the not too shocking price of $ 0.25. However, the issue’s only article, on a newly discovered species of mysids or “possum shrimps” in the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, sets the course for what the journal would become known for: Just like its mother institution, TSZ would develop a reputation for expertise on the zoology of the waters and adjacent lands of the Gulf of Mexico, and descriptions of new species discovered there would become a staple of its many future volumes. Over the years, the issues would grow heftier, and illustrations start to appear on the journal’s pages: at first simple and in black and white, later often in color and always as beautiful as the wildlife they depict. Soon enough, the scope of the journal had expanded even more, and a name change was needed: from 1968 to its final volume in 2012, the publication was known as Tulane Studies in Zoology and Botany and featured articles on plant life in the Southeastern United States, Mexico, and elsewhere in addition to its zoological program.

Just like the Zoology Department at Tulane and its vast natural history collections, later reorganized in the Biodiversity Research Institute (TUBRI), the journal covers a lot of ground, but the unquestionable stars of the show dwell in the water. TUBRI’s fish collection contains more than 6 million specimens, and accordingly, scores of fishes populate the pages of the journal as well. The legendary ichthyologist and collector Royal D. Suttkus, who had joined Tulane just before the founding of the journal and stayed on for no less than 50 years, constantly published his work in TSZB; his last article appeared posthumously in 2012 in what was also the last issue of the journal.    

Despite being anchored in decades of zoological history, TUBRI was always quick to embrace progress, and the Studies were one of the first journals to appear as an Open Access journal hosted by Tulane University Libraries back in 2012. Recently, the library’s Digital Initiatives department and TUBRI have partnered to make the over 60 years of back issues available on that platform as well: hundreds of articles are now digitized, enhanced with metadata and freely accessible to the public at https://journals.tulane.edu/tsz (Tulane Studies in Zoology, 1953-1968) and https://journals.tulane.edu/tszb/ (Tulane Studies in Zoology and Botany, 1968-2012). Thanks to the principles of Open Access, the library was able to use previously digitized material made available by the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and published under a Creative Commons license. The new collection thus not only documents decades of scientific discovery at Tulane, but is also a testament to the spirit of collaboration that Open Access enables.