Biodiversity Heritage Library

Our Experience at ALA Midwinter 2012

2012-01-26T09:52:00.006-05:00

A few weeks ago, we posted about our upcoming booth at the ALA Midwinter 2012 meeting in Dallas, TX, 20-24 January. After an extremely successful experience, which included the opportunity to collaborate with our friends at EOL on the booth, as well as the chance for two of our BHL staff members to give talks at the conference, we wanted to briefly fill you all in on the experience.

The American Library Association (ALA) was founded in October 1876 and is the oldest and largest library association in the world. It's mission is "to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all." ALA hosts two meetings annually: the Midwinter and Annual meetings. The Midwinter meeting was a collection of
events, exhibits, and sessions aimed at discussing the challenges and opportunities facing libraries today. With 6,236 attendees and 3,693 exhibitors, it offered us a fantastic opportunity to showcase the resources available through both BHL and EOL.

BHL, along with EOL, collaboratively hosted booth 1157 at the Midwinter meeting. EOL staff member Breen Byrnes, BHL staff members Grace Costantino, Martin Kalfatovic, Chris Freeland, and Suzanne Pilsk, as well as Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) staff member Mary Augusta Thomas, operated the booth throughout the four days of exhibits (Breen and Grace pictured above at booth). We not only engaged in meaningful conversations, answered a multitude of questions about the projects, and highlighted the beautiful images in our Flickr account, but we also gave away great goodies, including brochures, pens, notepads, Post-It notes, bags, cups, and, of course, candy.

Happily, many people were already familiar with BHL, and those that weren't were shocked and thrilled to learn that we were a free, open access project. In the midst of so many commercial vendors, and with the reality of constant cuts to library budgets, the word "free" truly stands out. Eighty-five people signed up for the EOL and soon to be coming BHL newsletters. We also engaged in conversations with several librarians at diverse institutions that were interested in sharing their digitized content with BHL. BHL and EOL were particularly popular among librarians working in educational environments, one of which stated, "They're free?! I can't believe I wasn't aware of these projects. My students will love them!"

BHL Technical Director Chris Freeland and SIL metadata librarian and BHL metadata guru Suzanne Pilsk gave talks about BHL at a panel discussion on scholarly communication, identifiers, and linked data.

Chris Freeland discussed the recent addition of DOIs to BHL content, and the struggles we went through to implement such identifiers. Most vendors, although recognizing the need for a policy to address the situation, were unable to work with a consortium (as opposed to a legal entity) that isn't a publisher and doesn't own all of the content it hosts. Furthermore, since not all of the content in BHL has an ISBN, an additional layer of complication is added to the mix. While CrossRefDOIs, available as Open Linked Data, are now available for BHL content, there are still many bugs to be worked out - bugs that are a direct result of issues mentioned above.

BHL: Assigning DOIs & Other Identifiers to Legacy Literature

View more presentations from Chris Freeland

Suzanne Pilsk discussed the recent Index Animalium and TL2 projects at SIL, both of which also involved BHL. She outlined how traditional librarianship (involving card cataloging and dusty volumes on shelves) was not meeting the needs of taxonomists and other researchers calling on libraries for help. But of course, libraries rose to the challenge, and SIL began digital projects for both Index Animalium and TL2, which linked the citations in these two works to the corresponding digitized texts, available via BHL.

Smithsonian Libraries Partnering in Research

View more presentations from SCPilsk

Thus, in short, our presence at ALA Midwinter 2012 was extremely successful. We shared our existence and resources with the nearly 10,000 people at the conference. We hope to host booths at future ALA events, the next of which is the ALA Annual Meeting in Anaheim, CA, 21-26 June, 2012. We hope to see you there!

BHL staff at Global Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Content Summit in Panama

2012-01-22T17:03:00.001-05:00

William Ulate and I attended the Global Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Content Summit at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's facility on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama. The meetings, 17-19 January 2012, brought together a group of current and planned world-wide EOL content providers. Joining BHL at the meeting were representatives from the Atlas of Living Australia, Naturalis, INBio, CONABIO, NHM/ViBRANT, GBIF, French Institute of Pondicherry India, Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, Biological Diversity and Environment Information System (Peru), and Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory (SI GEO).

After taking a bus from Panama City to Gamboa, we boarded one of the Smithsonian boats, The Morpho, for the 90 minute trip to Barro Colorado Island. After a quick orientation to the facilities on the island, we were assigned to our dorm rooms at the field station. In keeping with the BHL camaraderie, William and I shared room (along with a fairly large spider that we gave plenty of space).

The group reassembled for a hike around BCI. We were provided with excellent guides and spent nearly 3 hours exploring. Though we didn't see some of the more charismatic megafauna of the island (Tapir, Ocelot), we were showered with attention by a troop of Howler Monkeys, spotted an Agouti, heard the calls of two species of Toucan, saw a large piliated woodpecker, many ants (including Army ants and some impressive leaf cutters). Here's an EOL Collection of some of the things we saw.

As it got darker, a Tinamou posed for some photos and White Faced monkeys appeared. Oh, and there were some giant spiders. After a quick dinner in the dinning hall, we started in on the meeting. Each project represented gave a brief presentation to help the participants understand its focus. You can find mine here and William's here. The others will be posted by the EOL staff.

The first full day of meetings included an overview of the EOL activities and training on the content provider tools. In the evening, we had a social gathering on one of the verandahs where we watched some nocturnal creatures (bats, a large toad, etc.).

The final day of meetings (January 19) focused on developing content plans from the different partners as well as a discussion of EOL v.3 led by Erick Mata (EOL Executive Director).

We made some very good new contacts with our colleagues in India, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico and explored new collaborations with our partners in Europe and Australia.

Early on the morning of 20 January, we boarded the boat back to Gamboa and back to our next destinations.

Book of the Week: The Iconic Biodiversity of Africa

2012-01-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

Africa. It is the second largest continent in the world, as well as the second most populous. It is commonly regarded to be the location in which the human species originated. It is the only continent to stretch from the northern to southern temperate zones, making it home to a wide variety of life. Furthermore, it has the largest number of megafauna species in the world (megafauna being literally "large animals," typically considered those weighing greater than 100 or 220 pounds). As such, it is home to some of the most iconic species alive today, including elephants, lions, giraffes, and gorillas.

One of the most recent items added to our Flickr account is Great and Small Game of Africa (1899), and the stunning illustrations within the work have already inspired a great deal of chatter on the twitterverse.

While this volume was originally written as a guide for sportsmen, much of the biodiversity knowledge we hold in written format today was supplied in part by the observations and experiences of these individuals. This volume collects as much information about the species described within as was available and practical at the time of publication and presents it in a highly accessible format. For an added element of excitement for the reader, "Many of the articles have been written in the depths of Africa itself."

We present the illustrations and accompanying prose that we found most enticing. You can see all of the illustrations from this book on our Flickr account, and experience for yourself all the captivating accounts of these great fauna within the pages of the work itself.

The Rhinoceros

"At present day the group is restricted to Africa and the warmer parts of Asia. In Africa it is represented by the widely-spread common or black rhinoceros (R. bicornis [now Diceros bicornis]), the nearly extinct Burchell's, or white rhinoceros (R. simus [now Ceratotherium simum]) of the Cape and south-eastern regions, and the little-known Holmwood's rhinoceros (R. holmwoodi [determined to be the Black Rhinoceros in Tanzania]) of East Africa. All three are distinguished from their Asiatic relatives by their smooth skins and the absence of front teeth; and all have two horns. Burchell's rhinoceros, which is a grass-feeder, differs, however, very widely from the common species in the structure of its cheek-teeth. Holmwood's rhinoceros is at present known only by the horns and may prove not to be a distinct form."

The Zebra

"The zebras (sub-genus Hippotigris), which range over the open districts south of the Sahara, and are peculiar to Africa, differ from the asses in that at least the head and fore-part of the body are striped; the stripes in some cases extending over the whole animal. Four well-marked species may be recognised, viz.:- the quagga (E. quagga quagga [extinct subspecies of E. quagga]), now extinct, Burchell's zebra (E. burchelli), Grevy's zebra (E. grevyi), and the true or mountain zebra (E. zebra). Of the second of these at least seven more or less well-marked local races or sub-species may be distinguished, differing from one another in the arrangement of the stripes on the body, the presence or absence of intermediate 'shadow-stripes,' and the extent to which the striping extends on to the legs."

The Koodoo

"Koodoo, the name by which one of the most beautiful animals in the whole world is known to European sportsmen, must be, I think, a word of Hottentot origin, since it is not Dutch, nor does it at all resemble any of the many equivalents for the same animal used by the various Bantu tribes inhabiting South and South Central Africa.

This splendid antelope was once widely distributed through the southern portion of the African continent. Two conditions are necessary to its existence - water and bush...And wherever in South Africa these two conditions were fulfilled - with the single exception of the forests of Knysna - I believe that koodoos were once to be found. In the early part of the present century, koodoos were numerous in many parts of the eastern province of the Cape Colony, but they had become exceedingly rare in those districts at the date of my first visit to South Africa in 1871. Since that time, thanks to wise legislation on the part of the Cape Government, and the loyal support given to the gamelaws by the British and Dutch farmers, koodoos have lately very much increased in numbers in some of their old haunts within that territory."

The Giraffe

"These animals are very difficult of approach, in a general way, for they are extremely keen-sighted, and their towering height enables them to command a wide view...I do not think that lions very often succeed in killing these animals, defenceless though they be; and when they do, I believe it is generally a solitary giraffe (individuals of either sex are often seen alone) that has been surprised and pulled down by a party of lions.

Tick-birds - the same that so generally accompany the rhinoceros - often visit them, and it is curious to see these little guests running up and down their long necks, clinging to their sides and bellies, or sitting contentedly upon their heads while emitting their soft, querulous chirruping.

I have never heard giraffes make any sound, nor have I heard or read anywhere that their cry, if they have one, has ever been noticed."

BHL and Our Users: Dr. Kanchi Gandhi

2012-01-17T07:00:00.001-05:00

This week, we feature a colleague who combs the botanical literature for new plant names, determines their validity and contributes them to the International Plant Name Index (IPNI). Meet Dr. Kanchi Gandhi, who has been recognized by the American Association of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) for his countless pieces of nomenclatural advice provided to taxonomists worldwide and for keeping classical expertise in the practice of taxonomy alive.

What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest?

I have been the Senior Nomenclatural Registrar at the Harvard University Herbaria (HUH) in Cambridge, MA since 1995. I compile New World plant names for the IPNI and manage the HUH authority files for generic names, authors’ names, and publication titles.

My interests are in the areas of plant nomenclature, plant morphology, and plant taxonomy.

How long have you been in your field of study?

I began my first botanical project in 1970 as a scientific assistant at St. Joseph College in Bangalore, India, working on a survey of local flora in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. That is how I met Smithsonian botanist, Dan Nicolson, with whom I continued to work with for nearly 40 years. I taught plant taxonomy at The National College, Bangalore. I was awarded a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1989.

When did you first discover BHL?

The Harvard botany librarians introduced me to BHL in 2005.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?

I use it to consult materials that are not in our library and it is especially useful to me when my library is closed. I use it for the many reference questions that come to me to verify plant names and associated data. BHL is also very useful in communicating with international colleagues who cannot access Google-scanned material.

How often do you use BHL?

Every day, nearly 365 days a year!

How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Select Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.)?

I primarily use it as an online resource and refer others to it by forwarding URLs.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

The new search page works very well, especially for finding scientific names.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

I would prefer to have a simpler way to download a page or a segment of a page as one can do via the Real Jardín Botánico site or via the page delivery service (PDS) in Harvard’s online catalog, HOLLIS.

If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why?

In my case the digitization of early Indian floras would be very useful.

Conclusion:

Thank you, Dr. Gandhi, for giving us a brief glimpse into your work and use of the BHL! It is exciting to hear from one of our users that has taken advantage of BHL since its inception. We are constantly working to improve our user interface, and your comments about improving ease of download is valuable feedback for our developers.

To learn more about Dr. Gandhi, visit his webpage.

BHL and EOL at ALA Midwinter 2012!

2012-01-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

The American Library Association's 2012 Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, Texas, is just around the corner. January 20th-24th, thousands of librarians and other interested parties will descend upon the city to participate in the five day conference focused on everything you could possibly want to talk about regarding libraries. For more information about the conference, visit the ALA Midwinter 2012 website.

With the prospect of such an appropriate audience gathered in one place, we at BHL, along with our friends at Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to share a little bit about BHL and EOL with the rest of the world. How so? By hosting a booth at the conference.

The booth (booth number 1157), which will be open beginning at 5:30pm, Friday, Jan. 20th, until 2:00pm, Monday, Jan. 23rd, will be manned by various members of the BHL and EOL staff, all of whom will be ready and waiting to answer any questions or engage in any conversations you might have about either project, or the broader digital landscape in general. We'll also be live demoing both websites (BHL and EOL), showcasing our fabulous Flickr site, and handing out some great swag, including buttons, pens, brochures, business cards, and more. Plus, we'll be holdings raffles for even more snazzy things, including tote bags and tumblers. Oh, and of course, there will be candy!

So, to recap, if you're going to be at ALA Midwinter next week, stop by the BHL and EOL booth. And if you're not going to ALA, well, now that you know we are, you're making your travel plans, right? ;-)

What? BHL and EOL booth at ALA Midwinter, Dallas, TX, Jan. 20th-24th (For more information on the booth, click here and search under "E" for Encyclopedia of Life/Biodiversity Heritage Library)
Where? Exhibit Hall, Booth #1157
When? Booth will be open from 5:30pm, Friday, Jan. 20th - 2:00pm, Monday, Jan. 23rd (see exhibit site for more details on hours)
Why? Learn all about BHL and EOL with your chance to ask questions of staff, engage in lively conversations, and view live demos of the sites and affiliated content. Plus, we'll be handing out great free stuff! Don't miss it!

My Life as a BHL Staffer

2012-01-09T09:56:00.018-05:00

To kick off the new year, we here at BHL are starting a new monthly series titled "My Life as a BHL Staffer." Each month, we will showcase a different BHL staff member and give an overview of what tasks and duties that person performs. We kick off the series with me, Gilbert Borrego, BHL staff member from the Smithsonian Institution. While I have a lot of different duties to perform for BHL, I can group them into three main areas: Social Media (which includes Flickr and Facebook), the pagination of BHL materials, and lastly, the pulling and returning of the physical items that will be scanned and eventually show up on BHL. I’ll start with the fan favorite:

BHL Flickr:

The goal of having a BHL Flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/) is to have a means to showcase BHL content in a new and fun way. We want to supply a pool of image content for dissemination through multiple social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and for other potential BHL projects. We also use it to provide BHL content to the Encyclopedia of Life (http://eol.org) as part of their practice to automatically pull images from Flickr to include on EOL taxon pages. Lastly, we want to use it a way to connect with you, the BHL and Flickr communities!

We started making a real concerted effort to populate and utilize Flickr in July 2011 and it just took off! I usually choose the items that I want to post on Flickr based on what items come across my desk, looking at items on the BHL recent addition feed (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Recent.aspx), or doing keyword searches on BHL (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/). I look for the most visually stunning, interesting or intricate plates that I can find. I download all the images from an item, one image at a time.

Believe me, the two monitor set up is necessary!

I then upload them into Adobe Bridge which enables me to attach the all important metadata to all of the images. The metadata includes the filename, the creator, the source, descriptive information, keywords, credits, and copyright information. After that, I upload the whole batch to the BHL Flickr page and assign it to various categories including the contributing institution, the classification of the animals or plants pictured, and whether the item was used as a Book of the Week for this blog.

Beautiful, huh? :)

We also provide BHL content to the Encyclopedia of Life (http://eol.org). Images from our Flickr page are added to EOL when tagged with the proper machine tags with scientific names. You can learn more about machine tags here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life/rules/

And guess what? YOU can add machine tags to our images too! In fact, we would love for some assistance in getting even more of our images into EOL! Learn how to do it with this snazzy tutorial:

http://www.slideshare.net/eoleducation/eol-flickr-tutorial

We currently have over 22,000 images on Flickr and will continue to keep adding more and more! If you know of any items in BHL with images that are screaming to be added to Flickr, please let us know via FlickrMail or leave us some feedback (feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org).

I also post everyday on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Biodiversity-Heritage-Library/63547246565 We typically provide news and information that would be of potential interest to our Facebook followers. We try to change up the look of our page when we can, which means changing the profile picture often. Most importantly, we try to engage our users by being as interactive as we can. We love replying to comments and questions, so please be active and participate on our quizzes and make plenty of comments about anything we post!

Pulling and Returning Items:

SIL’s scanning process begins with the selection of material to scan. Material is selected for scanning based on three key areas: content identified by the systematic scanning of a biodiversity discipline topic (i.e. Entomology, Ornithology, Botany, etc.), institutional publications, and content identified through BHL’s issue tracking system, called Gemini, which includes user-submitted feedback. You can submit a scan request (or any other type of question or feedback here:

http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Feedback.aspx

Staff members work to resolve this feedback by assigning them to various BHL institutions to address. We also have a system in place that helps to help make sure different institutions do not scan the same items. Once items have been selected for scanning, I will retrieve the items from the appropriate library branch which are located throughout the Smithsonian Natural History Museum building.

Once the items have been scanned and the books are sent back to us, I review the quality of the scans by performing a statistical sampling of books from the shipment or scanning batch. The process of quality assessment can be time consuming as it involves clicking through the scanned page images while turning the physical pages of the book at the same time. However, it is very important that we provide high quality scans that are not missing pages or that have pages that are cut off. After the assessment, the items are checked back in and reshelved.

Yikes, that is a lot of books!

Pagination:

Pagination is the process of dividing our content into discrete pages in order to more easily find the information researchers need to help them do their work in a timely manner without having to search for information page by page. Basically, pagination includes indicating things such as page numbers, volume and issue numbers, tables of content, indices, identifying plates and figures and anything else to make searching through online items easy and quick. My position requires me to do quite a bit of pagination as it is an important component to using BHL for research. In the end, I want to make something that looks like this...

...to look a little more like this.

My pagination work screen looks like this:

I can manipulate multiple items at one time by checking the appropriate boxes, (for example, finding and checkmarking all the plates and have them numbering sequentially). If this looks like it takes a long time, it does! I have to look at every single page to verify what it is and give it the correct information. An item may take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, and certain series may take WEEKS, so be patient with us! :)

Seriously, we are looking at various ways to make the pagination process more automated, but for now, we have to manually manipulate each page. We prioritize pagination based on requests from users and we try to finish them up as soon as we can. So, if you know of an item in BHL that you would like paginated, please let us know (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Feedback.aspx). We will be happy to do it, just give us a little time to get it done.

Well, that is a very brief and simplified description of what I do for BHL. Hopefully it was both interesting and informative! You would not believe how hardworking and committed every BHL staffer is and how committed everybody is to this ambitious project and I am still amazed that I get to play a role in it! Be sure to look out for our next BHL member profile next month and learn more about us!

Book of the Week: Celebrating that Delightful Fungus Known as the Mushroom

2012-01-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

Paddestoel. Krötenschwamm. Fliegenpilz. Krötenstuhl. Mousseron. Frogge Stole. Paddocstol. Toadstool. What do all of these words have in common? They are all various names that have been applied to mushrooms over the centuries. Today, we're celebrating these curious, tasty, and sometimes deadly organisms with our book of the week, Nouvel Atlas de Poche des Champignons Comestibles et Vénéneux, (1911-12), v. 1. Fungi never looked as good as it does in the illustrations in this little gem...except, of course, perhaps between two pieces of bread at dinner last night...

The term "mushroom" refers to the "fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus." "Mushroom" is most often applied to fungi with a stem, cap, and gills or pores, though it can also be more universally applied to fungi of the Phylum Ascomycota, or "Sac Fungi," which are often woody or leathery in appearance.

The identification of mushrooms is a skill that takes many forms, from traditional methods including odors, tastes, colors, habitats, and seasons of occurrence, to more modern methods involving molecular investigation. A perhaps more interesting technique, however, involves mushroom spores. Mushrooms reproduce via spores, which are produced from basidia in the gills on the underside of a mushroom cap. These spores fall from the cap, and as a result, if the mushroom cap is cut from the stem and placed on a piece of paper overnight, the resulting pattern from the residue of falling spores, reflecting the shape of the gills themselves, will aid in identification of the species. Such patterns are referred to as "Spore Prints."

Mushrooms play a large role in the cuisine of cultures all across the globe, particularly in the foods of China, Korea, Europe and Japan. China, in fact, is the world's leading producer of edible mushrooms. The most popular commercially-grown species is Agaricus bisporus, which includes the well-known Portobello variety. However, despite their popularity as food, there are a number of toxic species, and telling the harmless from the harmful can be difficult as there is no universally-held trait among all poisonous or non-poisonous varieties. Even those species deemed non-poisonous can produce mild to severe allergic reactions in some individuals. As another concern for European varieties, since mushrooms are capable of absorbing heavy materials, many specimens in Europe may still be contaminated from the Chernobyl disaster.

Below are some of our favorite illustrations from our book of the week, Nouvel Atlas de Poche des Champignons Comestibles et Vénéneux, (1911-12), v. 1. You can see all of the illustrations from this book on our Flickr site. As a challenge to our readers, one of the species below is poisonous. Which one?

BHL and Our Users: Aaron Sims

2012-01-03T11:10:00.008-05:00

This week, we feature a rare plant botanist for the California Native Plant Society whose first words after discovering BHL for the first time were "this is amazing!" We thrive on these incredible moments of serendipitous discovery we so often hear about from our users, and we're proud to share one of them with you today in our feature on botanist Aaron Sims!

What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest?

I am the Rare Plant Botanist for the California Native Plant Society (CNPS), and manage the Rare Plant Program and Online Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants of California (Inventory). In addition to rare plants and field botany, my areas of interest are photography, kayaking, hiking, and pretty much anything involving the outdoors.

How long have you been in your field of study?

My love for the plant sciences started in college after having some very influential and knowledgeable botany teachers that were always enthusiastic and charismatic about the subject, in addition to genuinely caring about their students. Then after taking David Keil’s field botany class at Cal Poly State University in 2005, it was clear to me that botany is where I belong, and I assisted with David’s class until 2010, over three years after I had already graduated. In 2007 I began working for California State Parks on the Central Coast where I performed rare plant and vegetation surveys, in addition to various other tasks pertaining to natural resources. Then after completing the Atlas of Sensitive Species of the Morro Bay Area in 2010 (available at: www.mbnep.org/library), I moved to Sacramento and started working for CNPS.

When did you first discover BHL?

I first discovered BHL sometime in 2010 while researching plants for the Inventory. When a plant needs to be evaluated for inclusion, deletion, or change in rarity status in the Inventory, we initially start contacting people that may have knowledge on the subject taxon and immediately begin an in-depth research through various web resources. BHL came up through one of my searches for the original description of a rare plant taxon, and was the only site that had the actual full original description available for immediate download in PDF format. Awesome! I am pretty sure I exclaimed “this is amazing!” out loud as soon I discovered BHL, and I immediately bookmarked it in my browser.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?

BHL is an excellent resource that regularly helps the CNPS Rare Plant Program obtain original descriptions for plants during their review and assessment for inclusion/change/deletion in the Inventory. I feel so privileged to be working in a day in age when such resources are so readily available and easy to obtain. As a non-profit society, CNPS doesn’t have sufficient funds to subscribe to online journal databases, nor the time or resources to physically seek out every historical reference regarding rare plants in the Inventory. BHL helps fill this void by providing such resources free and readily available to the public.

How often do you use BHL?

The CNPS Rare Plant Program uses BHL weekly, if not nearly daily while drafting status reviews for changes in the Inventory.

How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Selecting Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.)

We typically use BHL to download whole PDFs that include the entire original description for plants that are being evaluated for the Inventory.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

The search functions are simple, accurate, and easy to use. Furthermore, I like the check boxes that accompany a scientific journal which allows one to easily click through subfolders of years, volumes, and issues while still showing the parent directory.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

Perhaps an obvious and routine task, but adding more references is greatly desired.

If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why?

I cannot choose one title of higher impact over another. All scientific journals and references that include botanical information, contain original plant descriptions, or any other pertinent information on plants we review for the Inventory are invaluable to the CNPS Rare Plant Program. Thank you for providing such an important resource and keep up the good work!

Celebrating the Life and Contributions of Charles Davies Sherborn

2011-12-22T10:00:00.004-05:00

On October 28, 2011, the ICZN (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature), in collaboration with the Society for the History of Natural History and others, hosted a symposium at the Natural History Museum, London, "Anchoring Biodiversity Information: From Sherborn to the 21st century and beyond,” honoring the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Davies Sherborn. Sherborn, 1861-1942, played a critical role in the biodiversity world by being the first to successfully index every living or extinct animal discovered and documented between 1758 and 1850. His greatest work, Index Animalium, took over 43 years to complete but is still referred to by taxonomist around the world. The one-day event, held at the Flett Theatre at the Natural History Museum, London, celebrated the incredible achievements of Sherborn and the ramifications for taxonomic research yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Several BHL-affiliated staff members presented at the symposium, including BHL Technical Director Chris Freeland and Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ (SIL) staff member and BHL metadata guru Suzanne Pilsk. SIL staff members Grace Costantino (Digital Collections Librarian for BHL) and Leslie Overstreet (Curator of the Joseph F. Cullman 3^rd Library at SIL, from which many BHL rare books have been scanned) also presented a poster at the event.

Approaches to preserving digitized taxonomic data

View more presentations from Chris Freeland

Chris Freeland’s presentation (pictured above) at the symposium, entitled “Approaches to preserving digitized taxonomic data: prints, manuscripts, specimens,” addressed methodologies for responsible curation of digitized prints, manuscripts, and specimens, and outlined best practices for safeguarding digitized taxonomic data to ensure longevity of resources. Such discussions are timely, as the availability of digitized taxonomic data has increased dramatically over the past twenty years as a result of increased support from national funding agencies and the declining cost of scanning devices. As such, natural history museums and libraries have taken on new responsibilities for managing electronic information as ways of providing enhanced opportunities for educational outreach and scholarly dissemination. Museums and libraries have to consider how best to create and care for electronic resources given a volatile technology landscape with rapidly changing file formats and display devices.

Unlocking indexanimaliumstatic

View more presentations from SCPilsk

SIL’s Suzanne Pilsk explained the role Smithsonian Libraries has played in bringing the critical work Index Animalium out of the library and off the page with a talk titled “Unlocking the Index Animalium: From paper slips to bytes and bits” (pictured above). Pilsk represented the work done to date by SIL staff, interns and volunteers to create an online version of the work . Smithsonian Libraries’ goal was to provide better access to the Index than was previously available and connect the researcher to the level of information needed. Over the span of years, staff has evolved the project from the initial vision of discovering where the text was located within the library walls, to linking to the scanned text via BHL.

Finally, the poster presented by Grace Costantino and Leslie Overstreet, entitled “Online Synergy: Sherborn’s Index Animalium and the Biodiversity Heritage Library,” delved into the link between SIL’s online version of Index Animalium and the digitized volumes within BHL. SIL’s online version of the Index Animalium allows researchers to search the entire multi-volume work by name, epithet, or other keyword. With the citation thus provided, researchers can then access the cited text itself on BHL, finding not only the species citation but, in many cases, remarkable illustrations as well.

The talks and posters from the symposium can be viewed here, and to find out more about the incredible life of Charles Davies Sherborn, take a look at the feature on him and the symposium in The Telegraph. You can also view photos from the event on Flickr.

BHL and Our Users: Gil Taylor

2011-12-20T10:00:00.001-05:00

Ever wondered how BHL decides what to scan? There are a variety of avenues that staff use to select titles for digitization, including scan requests submitted by users, BHL member publications and subject strengths, botany and zoology priority titles, in-copyright titles for which BHL has received permission to scan, and titles identified by BHL staff members as important biodiversity works. To accomplish the latter, the librarians at various BHL institutions play a key role. Their expertise and interaction with library patrons ideally situates them to inform collection development for the BHL project.

This week, we feature one of these individuals, Gil Taylor, librarian at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. He regularly uses day-to-day work within the library and conversations with patrons to suggest important works for BHL to digitize, and his enthusiasm for and promotion of the project ensures that anyone coming into contact with the Smithsonian Libraries is made aware of the wealth of information available within the BHL collection.

What is your title and institutional affiliation?

I’m assistant department head at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s Natural and Physical Sciences department. Recently I have been overseeing the Entomology and Invertebrate Zoology (IZ) libraries at the NMNH, along with Museum Support Center Library, in Suitland, MD. I have been at the SIL since 1990.

How long have you been working in a library environment?

Nearly 30 years. Before coming to SIL, I worked full time in a number of libraries and technical services at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I also received my MLS in 1989. I came aboard in the library world just as the OPAC was superseding the card catalog, and to me it was particularly interesting, especially as you could access the catalog remotely. I felt like I was cutting-edge back in the 1980’s as I was the only one in my library school cataloging class who typed up sample cards using an Apple II and a dot matrix printer instead of using a typewriter.

When did you first discover BHL?

I feel as if I witnessed its birth, as it grew out of SIL’s Biologia Centrali-Americana project.

What is your current level of involvement in BHL?

I serve on SIL’s BHL Task Force and try to identify needs BHL can fill for our researchers. I was very happy to be on board with BHL as the Entomology and IZ Libraries here were among the first SIL libraries to be “harvested” for BHL. But, I primarily I see myself as a BHL evangelist, taking every opportunity to expound on what a great, quality non-profit effort It is. I believe it’s utterly central to the librarian ethos to make every effort to share the knowledge you’re charged with curating.

What is your opinion of BHL and what impact has it had on your duties as a librarian?

From a front-line reference librarian perspective, it has been a real boon. Our staff members sometimes take particular delight in responding to ILL queries for our materials by pointing to their availability in BHL. Not having to painstakingly copy materials, sometimes from old volumes with fragile bindings, is a huge time-saver.

How often do you use BHL?

When doing reference work, almost every day.

What has been the reaction of your patrons to BHL?

I remember the initial skepticism from staff and users that the image quality of scans would not be good enough for serious taxonomic identification work. When users know they have access to original scans in a very lossless format, I have rarely come across a patron who was dissatisfied with what they have downloaded from BHL. For older curators and volunteers, their first time in utilizing BHL can seem almost magical in its instant gratification.

What services/features do you like most about BHL and which do you most like to point out to your patrons? Which services/features are your patrons most excited about/use the most often?

There is no one specific feature that I point out routinely, but I emphasize to patrons that because BHL is nearly a grass-roots effort, all suggestions and feedback for its improvement are taken seriously and can really make a difference. We can clearly see this, for example, as BHL continually tweaks its UI. Compare this to attempting to get the attention of a vast information services conglomerate.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

I think some work needs to be done on correcting OCR, as this can be a problem when exporting content to mobile platforms. One researcher here recently inquired about how to access BHL content on an iPad while he is in a deep-sea submersible.

I think I (and others) would like to have the ability to upload a list of citations from a researcher and have BHL automatically link to corresponding content. This seems almost like a science fiction fantasy for a librarian, but I think it is within the reach of developers.

The BLE virtual exhibition of BHL content that BHL-Europe is experimenting with seems like a terrific way to package and serve content in literally spicy, creative ways. This is the customized library subject guide of the future.

As I also answer or direct public e-mail queries at SIL, I see a lot of requests for images. Further indexing of images through pattern recognition, etc. could dramatically widen the BHL’s audience.

Is there a specific item on BHL that is most often requested by your patrons/that you use more than any other to fulfill ILL requests?

For the public, but also from SI researchers, the mostly 19^th century, legacy Smithsonian-published materials (annual reports/bulletins of the USNM, Bureau of Ethnology, etc.) are particularly popular.

____________________________

Thank you, Gil, for all the work you do for BHL and for the critical contributions you make to the development and dissemination of the project. And we send a special thanks to all our librarian colleagues who make BHL run like such a well-oiled machine!

Book of the Week: Big Cats Week!

2011-12-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

This week is Big Cats Week, and to celebrate we're featuring a book in our collection that has some of the loveliest engravings of these majestic felines that we've ever seen. The book, Engravings of Lions, Tigers, Panthers, Leopards, Dogs, etc. (1853), by Thomas Landseer, contains 39 plates. The first twenty - of lions, tigers, panthers, and leopards - are engravings by Thomas Landseer after original works by Stubbs, Rubens, Spilsbury, Rembrant, Reydinger, and Edwin Landseer.

We hope you enjoy these marvelous works, and for each of the species depicted, we've included some interesting facts and links to the animals in EOL, where you can learn even more about them. Be sure to check out Big Cats Week on the National Geographic website, and you can follow the discussion on twitter (BHL account - @BioDivLibrary) with the hashtag #bigcatsweek. And remember, you can see all of the illustrations from this work on our Flickr account.

Lion

Second largest living cat
The tallest of all living cats
Until about 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread mammal after humans, with ranges including Africa, Europe, Asia and even the Americas
Usually, eight subspecies of lions are recognized
Lions can be bred with tigers, leopards, and panthers, producing, respectively, ligers, leopons, and jaglions
The only member of the cat family to display obvious sexual dimorphism (with the manes on males)

Tiger

The largest of all cat species
The longest canine teeth among living felids
Six living recognized subspecies
The subspecies of tigers are the most varied in size of any cat species. The Siberian, Bengal and Caspian are the largest living felids and some of the largest to ever live. While males of these varieties can weigh between 600-670 pounds, the smallest tiger subspecies, the Sumatran, weighs only 170-310 pounds.
The South China Tiger subspecies is listed as one of the 10 most critically endangered animals in the world, and indeed may already be extinct in the wild.

Panther (Jaguar or Cougar)

The panther may refer to the leopard in Africa and Asia, the cougar in North America, or the jaguar in Central and South America.

The jaguar resembles the leopard physically but is larger
The jaguar has an exceptionally powerful bite, crushing the skulls of prey to deliver a "death-bite" to the brain
The mountain lion, cougar, or puma, native to the Americas, has the largest range of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere
The cougar is closer genetically to the domestic cat than true lions

Leopard

The smallest of the four big cats (lion, tiger, jaguar and leopard)
It is chiefly found in sub-Saharan Africa, though small populations can be found in Asia
Both leopards and jaguars that are completely black are known as black panthers
There are nine recognized subspecies of leopards
The Amur Leopard, one of the nine subspecies, is considered one of the rarest felids in the world, with only approximately 30-35 individuals in the wild
The Arabian Leopard is the smallest leopard subspecies
The Persian Leopard is the largest leopard subspecies

Support BHL this Holiday Season

2011-12-13T10:00:00.001-05:00

It's December, and the holiday season is upon us! Neighborhoods are basking in a many-colored glow cast by light strands hung by the mile, stores have stocked their shelves with every gift and festive item imaginable, and a general atmosphere of good cheer hangs in the air. As you think about buying gifts for your loved ones this season, consider giving a gift to BHL as well.

To date, we've scanned over 36 million pages for BHL, but that scanning doesn't happen by magic. It takes dozens of dedicated staff members and generous financial resources provided by grants, endowments, and donations contributed by the public. We believe in the work we do, and the success of our donations button and the continuous praise we receive for BHL shows us that you do too!

We have a dream to digitize all available taxonomic literature and make it freely available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. During an era in world history where three-quarters of climate change is manmade, it is vital that the critical knowledge held within the legacy literature be made available to scientists, researchers, conservationists, and the public at large so that we can make intelligent decisions to save global biodiversity for generations to come. Without the generous support of grants and donations, this dream will be very difficult to realize.

So, as you brave the malls, overcrowded parking lots, and perhaps over-zealous shoppers, keep BHL in your thoughts. Making a donation to BHL is much simpler than tackling the challenges of department store shopping. All you have to do is click on the "Donate" button located at the top of the BHL website. All donations are tax-deductible, and the easy donation interface allows your to contribute any amount you desire. No gift is too small, and all will contribute to the strengthening and expanding of BHL. Learn more about the BHL donate button in our previous blog post.

And now, for your holiday enjoyment, we present a selection of season-appropriate images from our collection. Be sure to check out the over 22,000 biodiversity images in our Flickr account, made available in part by gifts provided by you!

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Book of the Week: Welcome to the Orchid Family, Bulbophyllum nocturnum!

2011-12-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

While there are many species of plants that flower at night, and among those are many orchids, scientists researching in New Britain just discovered the only orchid species that flowers exclusively at night. Meet Bulbophyllum nocturnum, discovered by Ed de Vogel during a field trip to the lowland rainforest of the island, which is located near Papua New Guinea.

Dr. de Vogel, after taking a specimen of the plant home to the Netherlands with him, discovered that it only flowers a few hours after dusk and closes a few hours after sunrise. While this is a remarkable discovery, the purpose for the flower's nocturnal preference remains a mystery. According to Andre Schuiteman, a co-author of the paper detailing the find, which was published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, "related species are pollinated by tiny flies that think they are visiting fungi," with the smell and physical appearance of the flower appearing like fungus in the eyes of the insect. The insects visit the flower searching for a place to lay their eggs and unwittingly pollinate it. There is a strong possibility that a night-foraging fly species may thus be the pollinator of B. nocturnum and the reason for its unique behavior.

The authors of the paper stipulate that it will take much more research before some of the questions surrounding this species are answered. These are questions best answered in the field. However, as the BBC article (from which this information comes) articulates, examining the flower in the wild may be difficult in the future. The orchid was discovered in a previously-inaccessible portion of the island, which, thanks to recent roads constructed for the purposes of logging, has only lately been opened up for scientific discovery. While the logging thus made the find itself possible, it also threatens the long-term survival of the species. Schuiteman affirmed that it is necessary for the local government to protect the habitat of the species from the potential damages caused by logging.

To celebrate the discovery of our new orchid friend, for this week's book of the week we're featuring a book full of stunning orchid illustrations. Abbildungen der in Deutschland und den Angrenzenden Gebieten Vorkommenden Grundformen der Orchideenarten (1904), by Friedrich Kränzlin, features 60 gorgeous plates by Walter Müller. While of course Bulbophyllum nocturnum is too new to science to be included in this work, we're happy to know that future publications will highlight this species just as beautifully as this book does for the species included within its pages.

For our post, we're featuring some of our favorite illustrations from the work. You can enjoy all of the images from this title on our Flickr site, which now has over 21,000 natural history images. Hopefully one day we'll be able to pull in an illustration of Bulbophyllum nocturnum as well!

Left: Anacamptis laxiflora (Loose-Flowered Orchid; Green-winged Meadow Orchid)

Middle: Cypripedium calceolus (Lady's Slipper Orchid)

Right: Epipactis atrorubens (Dark Red Helleborine; Royal Helleborine)

Left: Orchis italica

Middle: Epipogium aphyllum (Ghost Orchid)

Right: Limodorum abortivum (Violet Limodore)

Abbildungen der in Deutschland und den Angrenzenden Gebieten Vorkommenden Grundformen der Orchideenarten (1904), by Friedrich Kränzlin and Walter Müller, was contributed by the New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

Image Credit (Top): J. Vermeulen, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15818662

BHL Staff Meeting Success

2011-12-07T10:30:00.001-05:00

Just after the Life and Literature conference, on Wednesday November 16, members of the BHL Staff got together to talk about day-to-day BHL issues. It was a rare and wonderful opportunity for this highly distributed staff to meet in person. Staff members were present from most of the BHL Consortium Member Institutions, now 14 members strong!

If you missed the announcement from the Life and Literature Conference, BHL has welcomed two new members to its consortium, Cornell University Library and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Libraries. More information about BHL's newest members will be posted soon.

BHL Staff met to discuss the new ideas resulting from the Life and Literature conference as well as issues related to governance, social media, scanning workflow and technical development. Of note on the agenda was a discussion on how to solve the issue of integrating more "boutique" scanning projects into the current workflow. To date, the BHL has scanned and incorporated content into its collection mainly through two standard workflows, with scanning partners the Internet Archive and the Missouri Botanical Garden's Botanicus Digital Library project. Staff shared with each other about new processes under development to help tackle the not-so-insignificant issue of incorporating content into the collection scanned through alternate workflows.

The BHL Staff welcomed colleagues from BHL-Europe and BHL-Australia at the meeting, as well as colleagues from partner projects, the Field Book Project and the Connecting Content Grant.

With new BHL members, new workflows and new ideas resulting from the Life and Literature conference, BHL Staff activities are entering some very exciting and dynamic times ahead. Stay tuned for more updates as 2012 unfolds. Onward and upward we go!

BHL and Our Users: Dr. Thomas Carefoot

2011-12-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

After a short break during which we featured various posts related to the Life and Literature conference, we again resume our BHL and Our User series, kicking things off again with Dr. Thomas Carefoot, a marine biologist and the author of the delightful educational website on west-coast marine invertebrates, A Snail's Odyssey.

What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest?

I am retired from a 35-year teaching and research position in marine biology at the University of British Columbia, Canada. My research specialties include the study of a group of marine snails known as sea hares, and I have sought them out in many tropical areas of the world. I am well versed on invertebrate marine life, most notably on the Pacific west coast, but also throughout the Caribbean, Indo- Pacific, and other tropical areas. I enjoy talking and lecturing about marine invertebrates, and a few years before retirement was awarded the University’s prestigious Master Teacher Award. I have written 2 books on marine ecology, authored some 90 research papers, and have recently produced a large educational website on west-coast marine invertebrates called A Snail's Odyssey. I am currently working on an equally large educational website called the Biology of Caribbean Coral Reefs.

How long have you been in your field of study?

For over 50 years, from commencement of an Honours BSc programme at the University of British Columbia (UBC), leading to an MSc degree at the same institution, and followed by a doctorate at the University of Wales, all in the field of marine biology. My first job was at the Marine Sciences Centre, McGill University, followed by an appointment to the Zoology Department at UBC in 1969. As part of the McGill experience was one year’s appointment as Director of the Bellairs Research Institute in Barbados. In total, I have spent about 3 years in the Caribbean, have visited all but a handful of the major islands, and have SCUBA-dived on most Caribbean reef systems.

When did you first discover BHL?

Several years ago when I first started researching scientific articles on west-coast marine invertebrates for my website A Snails' Odyssey.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?

BHL provides an excellent service for studies of marine and other biodiversity. However, as my research interests are not in biodiversity per se, I use the service only for accessing pertinent literature on west-coast and coral-reef marine invertebrates for inclusion in my educational websites.

How often do you use BHL?

About once a week.

How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Selecting Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.)

For downloading articles from journals.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

The only one that I have regularly used is the PDF downloading privilege.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

I would streamline the system for downloading PDFs. It is currently time-consuming and “out of synch” with similar accessing systems for other scientific journals. For example, the journal I most access at BHL is the Journal of Shellfish Research (JSR), which is presently most easily “downloadable” as entire volumes. It would be a relatively easy job to split each volume into its component research papers, format these as PDFs, and have an accessing system along the lines of other journal publishers. I realize that JSR is just one of the many journals in the BHL, but it would be a start.

Thank you, Dr. Carefoot, for sharing your experience and resources with us! Be sure to check out A Snails' Odyssey, which chronicles the whimsical story of an upper intertidal snail who, finding himself mistakenly cast into the deep waters of the ocean, slowly but steadily makes his way back home to shallower waters. Along the way he encounters many different marine species, which offer a plethora of opportunities for discovery for both the snail and the reader. For each species, there is a short cartoon animation meant to give a light-hearted introduction to the animal, and a scientific Learnabout, which offers more in-depth information, including summaries of a multitude of scientific papers written about the invertebrates. It's a fun, educational site for all ages.

Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 5

2011-12-02T10:00:00.002-05:00

Today we feature the last 4 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. We hope you've enjoyed this opportunity to see what those present at the conference had to say about it and BHL. You can see these and all other interviews on the Life and Literature website.

Don't forget to share your thoughts about Life and Literature via our Titan Pad discussion pages, and also take a look at conference notes and speaker presentations on the website.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Jennifer Rubin, Matthew Regan, and Bianca Crowley for conducting these interviews, and to all those who participated and shared their valuable thoughts with us.

Karen Baker:

Matthew Person:

Vladimir Blagoderov:

Mary Ochs:

Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 4

2011-12-01T10:00:00.002-05:00

Continuing with our theme, here are the next 4 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. The first three feature recipients of the JRS African digitization scholarship, which funded the expenses of nine visitors from Africa to both attend the conference and an additional meeting on Wednesday (Nov. 16th) with the express purpose of discussing biodiversity literature digitization in Africa (expect more information on this meeting in a future post). The fourth interview is that of Dr. Jinzhong Cui, the director of BHL-China. All interviews are available on the Life and Literature website.

Don't forget to share your thoughts about Life and Literature via our Titan Pad discussion pages, and also take a look at conference notes and speaker presentations on the website.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Jennifer Rubin, Matthew Regan, and Bianca Crowley for conducting these interviews, and to all those who participated and shared their valuable thoughts with us.

Dorothy Wanja Nyingi:

Ashah Owano:

Willem Coetzer:

Dr. Jinzhong Cui:

Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 3

2011-11-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

Now we present the next 3 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. All of these interviews are available on the Life and Literature website.

Don't forget to share your thoughts about Life and Literature via our Titan Pad discussion pages, and also take a look at conference notes and speaker presentations on the website. If you attended the Life and Literature conference, be sure to take the survey, which will be closing November 30th.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Jennifer Rubin, Matthew Regan, and Bianca Crowley for conducting these interviews, and to all those who participated and shared their valuable thoughts with us.

Natalia Zamora:

Alex Asase:

Marty Schlabach:

Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 2

2011-11-29T10:00:00.001-05:00

Continuing with our posting of the Life and Literature conference attendee interviews, below you will find the next 3 out of the 17 interviews, all of which are available on the Life and Literature website.

Don't forget to share your thoughts about Life and Literature via our Titan Pad discussion pages, and also take a look at conference notes and speaker presentations on the website. If you attended the Life and Literature conference, be sure to take the survey, which will be closing November 30th.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Jennifer Rubin, Matthew Regan, and Bianca Crowley for conducting these interviews, and to all those who participated and shared their valuable thoughts with us.

Ely Wallis:

Sue Ann Gardner:

Chris Wildrick:

Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 1

2011-11-28T10:00:00.002-05:00

As we continue to explore the various outcomes of the Life and Literature conference, two common questions we receive are, "Who was at the conference" and "What did they have to say about it or BHL?" If you are also asking yourself these questions, then you're in luck! While at the conference, we conducted interviews with several of the attendees, asking them these very things. And we've made these interviews available on the Life and Literature website.

This week on the BHL blog, we'll post a few of the 17 interviews each day, giving you the chance to get to know the thoughts and opinions of those at Life and Literature. And if these interviews stimulate ideas and opinions about the conference or BHL in you, be sure to share those on our Titan Pad discussion pages! Don't forget that conference notes and speaker presentations can also be found on the website. If you attended the Life and Literature conference, be sure to take the survey, which will be closing November 30th.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Jennifer Rubin, Matthew Regan, and Bianca Crowley for conducting these interviews, and to all those who participated and shared their valuable thoughts with us. Enjoy the first 3 of the 17 interviews below, and see them all on the Life and Literature website.

George Dyson:

Edward Valauskas:

Lucy Waruingi:

Book of the Week: Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T10:00:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving! We wanted to celebrate the holiday with an appropriate item from our collection. What did we find? Five Hundred Questions and Answers! On Poultry Raising (1899), by James Wallace Darrow. It features everything you could possibly need to know about raising poultry, with categories structured around feeding and care, diseases, eggs, poultry buildings, incubators, and, as you might expect, an entire chapter devoted to turkeys, ducks and geese! For our post, in case you're considering raising your own turkey for next year, we thought we'd share some of our favorite tidbits of information from the book. Have a lovely, relaxing holiday and enjoy our holiday-themed Book of the Week!

Feeding and Care:

Onions and Eggs: "My fowls love onions, but it is said that onions give the eggs an onion flavor? Do they?"

"No; onions do not affect the flavor of the eggs. Onions have been fed for weeks at a time along with other food, with no taint perceptible in the eggs. It would be just as reasonable to say that chicks hatched from eggs laid by onion eating hens would smell and taste of onion!"

Diseases:

1) Apoplexy: "I have lost some chickens that acted as though they had a spasm. On examining them [I] found the skin had turned a dark red. They were taken suddenly, and tried to stand on their heads. I feed a warm feed in the morning, oats at noon, corn at night. What is it?"

"This was probably apoplexy - a sudden rush of blood to the head, and a rupture of a blood vessel there. The remedy is prevention. You have probably been overfeeding, and should give only two meals per day. Reduce the grain feed and give steamed clover or some such bulky feed instead. Above all make them work for their food by obliging them to scratch it up. Exercise is one of the best preventives of disease."

Eggs:

Should Eggs Rest: "Does it injure eggs to ship them long distances, and how long should they rest before being put in incubators?"

"There is a foolish notion prevailing among some fowl breeders, that eggs which have been shipped a distance should rest a day or two before being placed in an incubator. As soon as the hens are ready to set, or the incubator ready for work, place the eggs under or in at once; they will rest as comfortably in either place as elsewhere, in fact, better; for everybody knows that the fresher the eggs the more chicks they will yield, and the healthier the chicks."

Poultry Houses:

The Best Poultry House: "Which is the best plan for a poultry house?"

"A poultry house is like a dwelling house - no two persons will agree. Much depends on climate, lay of the land, soil, etc. The most potent factor is the 'pocket-book,' as no matter what the plan may be, it must correspond with the contemplated cost. Hence, we can only reply that there is no best poultry house."
Incubators and Broiler Raising:

Handling: "Does it do harm to handle the eggs, such as testing them, or changing them from one machine to another after they have been in the incubator for three days?"

"No. Not if they are handled carefully and not exposed to cold air too long. In testing eggs in a cool room it is well to warm a couple of blankets folded to be a little larger than the egg tray. Cover the untested eggs with one warm blanket and spread the other over another tray and slip the eggs under as fast as tested. In this way chilling the eggs can be avoided."

Miscellaneous:

Highest Egg Record: "Please give me the highest egg record for a hen in one year?"

"In England 280 is claimed, but we have no records, and cannot state. Be satisfied with 150 or even 100."

Turkeys:

Fattening Turkeys: "State the best feed to fatten turkeys."

"To fatten turkeys give them their accustomed range and all the cooked corn, meal and potatoes they will eat up clean twice a day; plenty of grain at night and milk to drink at all times. Mix a little pulverized charcoal in the food once a day. Three weeks of this feeding and your turkeys will be in the best possible condition for the table; that is, if they have been growing and in good condition from the start. Remember that no amount of stuffing for a few weeks just before killing will make a prime, extra-large, table or market bird out of a turkey that has been starved and stunted."

Happy Thanksgiving! :-)

(Image comes from: Bilder-atlas zur Wissenschaftlich-populären Naturgeschichte der Vögel in ihren sämmtlichen Hauptformen (1864), fig. 233)

Post Life & Literature: Themes and Outcomes

2011-11-22T11:00:00.001-05:00

If you happened to be living under a rock for the past two weeks and missed our blog posts, tweets, and posts on Facebook, you might have missed the fact that last week was the Life and Literature Conference, an event hosted by BHL with the express purpose of generating conversations about the priorities for biodiversity literature digitization, particularly as it pertains to BHL, for the next 4-5 years. The conference, which took place November 14-15, 2011, in Chicago, IL, brought together interested parties in a variety of disciplines, including science, education, informatics, and the humanities. Lively discussions and insightful presentations ensued both days, with dozens of live tweets (hashtag #lifelit) constantly streaming for those who could not participate in person.

The conference was divided into four panel discussions, followed on the second day by break-out sessions that allowed attendees to delve deeply into the various topics discussed during panel sessions, ultimately leading to an outline of the various areas deemed most important for BHL to focus on in the next 4-5 years. The four panel sessions included "Research, Informatics, and the Published Record;" "Publishers, Aggregators, and Authors - New Models and Access;" "Learning and Education;" and "Building Collaborative Networks for Science and the Humanities through Scientific Literature." A synopsis of the four panels can be found on the Life and Literature site, as well as a list of each of the presenters and their biographies. Session presentations are being loaded to the BHL wiki and can be accessed on the Presentations page. Notes from the sessions can be found on the Life and Literature website. You can also view interviews of conference attendees on the website.

In order to facilitate a discussion with the audience during panel and breakout sessions, BHL staff used an application called Titan Pad, which provides a collaborative environment that allows anyone to access a document to view, edit, or make comments in real time. There were Titan Pad pages for each of the panels and breakouts, and live notes, as well as live discussion, occurred via those avenues. These pages remain live, and we encourage anyone interested to continue the discussion in the weeks to come!

While many ideas and themes resulted from the discussion generated at the conference, perhaps the most recurring topic involved the connection between science and the humanities. Presentations by speakers at the Humanities panel highlighted some of the possible intersections between art and science, and each breakout session touched upon the various ways that BHL could partner with the humanities and make the biodiversity illustrations already in BHL more accessible. The BHL Flickr site, which currently houses more than 20,000 images, was a huge success, and attendees discussed additional ideas about how BHL could further promote its illustrations and engage the arts and humanities communities. Such ideas as specific image searching interfaces, image-specific collections, and collaborations with artist communities were discussed, and BHL staff outlined some art-related grant projects currently in the works.

The winner of the Life and Literature Code Challenge was also presented at the conference. The Code Challenge asked users to create applications that would use, disseminate, or display BHL data in new and meaningful ways. The winner? Ryan Schenk, with his application Synynyms. Synynyms works as a taxonomic name aggregator, finding all of the different names given to a species over the years and displaying the frequency of each name variety throughout history. The names are provided by the Encyclopedia of Life, and the publications come from, you guessed it, BHL! Congratulations to Ryan, and thanks for sharing such an awesome tool with us!

Last, but certainly not least, two new members of the BHL family were announced, Cornell University Library and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Libraries. With these new members joining the fold the BHL consortium is now 14 members strong! Stay tuned for more information about BHL's newest members to come in future posts.

The Life and Literature conference was also surrounded by a variety of other important BHL meetings, including a BHL Global Meeting (see previous post on the event), a BHL Staff meeting, and a meeting devoted to a discussion on the digitization of biodiversity literature in Africa. Watch for posts on the latter two meetings in the days to come.

As we think about the outcomes of the conference, we are excited to explore the possibilities for the future and inform our development through user feedback. For BHL to serve its purpose, it must meet the needs of its user community, and events like Life and Literature allow us to gather and assess those needs. However, if you couldn't make it to Life and Literature, or if you did but still have more thoughts on BHL's future, you can still share them! Contribute your ideas through our Titan Pad discussions, by submitting feedback to our website, or posting your ideas via twitter (@biodivlibrary) and Facebook! We're waiting to hear from you, and thanks to everyone who made Life and Literature such an exciting and successful venture!

(Images: All images courtesy Martin Kalfatovic. Top: BHL Buttons presented at the Life and Literature Conference; Middle: George Dyson delivering the second plenary speech at Life and Literature; Bottom: SUE - the largest, most complete T-Rex skeleton ever discovered, on display at the Field Museum, the Life and Literature Conference venue)

Life & Literature Future Framing for BHL

2011-11-15T21:32:00.001-05:00

Life & Literature Future Framing for BHL

View more presentations from Chris Freeland

14-15 November, 2011, Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois, USA. http://www.lifeandliterature.org.

A quick overview from Second Global BHL Planning Meeting...

2011-11-15T19:47:00.004-05:00

We just had the Second Global BHL Planning Meeting in Chicago Field Museum this past November 13, 2011 with representatives of all BHL Programs, except our colleagues from Bibliotheca Alexandrina, who couldn’t attend this time. During the meeting, each of our BHL Programs shared their progress since our (last Global Meeting on September 2010) and it was definitely a year of new and valuable achievements for all.

For BHL-US/UK, beyond an increasing access to constantly growing content, an improved appearance that includes a whole new logo, and the novel Flickr account, now with more than 20,000 images, turned into a fundamental component of our outreach activities to new communities. Also, the election of a new Executive Committee and the incorporation of new library partners were part of the good news of this year. Our Australian colleagues launched their new appealing website) to contribute content about Australian species to the Atlas of Living Australia project and are now getting ready to start digitizing and sharing their content from BHL-Australia. Our colleagues from BHL-China have come a long way this past year integrating BHL-China with the numerous projects on biodiversity they have in all their country’s provinces. BHL-China node hosted colleagues from BHL-US/UK last year for (technical meetings), and continued digitalization of valuable Chinese material, now shared also through BHL-US/UK. BHL-Europe is ready to launch by the end of this year their new portal that will aggregate content from European libraries, increase support to species names and allow for a powerful new Advance Search interface. Likewise, our colleagues from SciELO-Brazil have been contributing their information to BHL's citation repository, Citebank and are now setting up the equipment and workflows to inaugurate their new digitization facilities by April next year.

We also discussed and reviewed the Vision of BHL as a global unified network where its member institutions share their leadership and coordinate within the nodes, engaging with other organizations related to our field to become the recognized reference tool for biodiversity literature. We all agreed on more and better communications between the nodes and defined ways to coordinate this. Also, as part of the review of the governance structure of BHL, it was decided to form a Coordinating Committee that would establish the by-laws and tackle some of the challenges and issues addressed during the meeting and support the implementation of the way forward. It was also decided to hold a Technical Meeting in conjunction with our Global BHL Meeting next year.

As the meeting came to an end, all participants were looking forward for another new exciting year, initiated with the Life and Literature Meeting the following two days, as a source of valuable input from colleagues, users and staff on the areas and activities that BHL should focus and prioritize for the following 5 to 7 years!

William Ulate, Global BHL Project Coordinator

Book of the Week: Burroughs and the Nature Essay

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

If you were asked who Henry David Thoreau is, chances are you'd have a least a general idea along the lines of an author who wrote, among other things, works centered around natural history themes. If we ask you who John Burroughs is, however, would you be able to confidently respond? The fact is, John Burroughs is recognized as "the most important practitioner after Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay." Given the nickname "The Grand Old Man of Nature," Burroughs was a "virtual cultural institution" of the American Conservation Movement by the turn of the century. He authored many natural history titles that his biographer Edward Renehan described as the works of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." However, though his style perfectly harmonized with the cultural movement occurring during the time of his career, he has become relatively obscure in our present day.

Though Burroughs was first published in 1860, he worked as a clerk and federal bank examiner, writing only on the side, until the 1880s. It was not until 1871 that, encouraged by friend Walt Whitman, Burroughs published his first nature-oriented work entitled Wake-Robin. In 1874, Burroughs purchased a 9-acre farm in New York, where he grew many crops, including fancy table grapes, while he continued to write and work as a bank examiner. In 1895, he built a cabin near Riverby, where he grew celery and entertained visitors.

Burroughs wrote many popular nature works about such locales as the Catskills, Peekamoose Mountain, Mill Brook Ridge, and the Delaware River. He was very active in the debates of the "Nature Fakers Controversy," which "highlighted the conflict between science and sentiment in popular nature writing." A new style of nature writing took hold in the late nineteenth century in which "the natural world was depicted in a compassionate rather than realistic light." Burroughs was against "fantastical representations of wildlife," and published an article in 1903 entitled "Real and Sham Natural History" to express his views.

This week, we feature a book by John Burroughs all about squirrels and other "fur-bearers." Descriptively named Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers (1900), this works contains fifteen illustrations completed after Audubon. Besides squirrels, it features chipmunks, skunks, raccoons, porcupines, and more. We selected some of our favorite illustrations from the book and included anecdotes from Burroughs about the species. You can see all of the illustrations from our Book of the Week on our Flickr account, and be sure to check out the book in BHL to learn more about the critters, including an enigmatic chapter entitled "A Life of Fear."

Red Squirrel: "The red Squirrel is more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields...At home, in the woods, he is very frolicsome and loquacious. The appearance of anything unusual, if, after contemplating it a moment, he concludes it not dangerous, excites his unbounded mirth and ridicule, and he snickers and chatters, hardly able to contain himself...There is something very human in this apparent mirth and mockery of the squirrels. It seems to be a sort of ironical laughter, and implies self-conscious pride and exultation in the laughter. 'What a ridiculous things you are, to be sure!' he seems to say; 'how clumsy and awkward, and what a poor show for a tail! Look at me, look at me!' - and he capers about in his best style."

Skunk: "The secretion upon which he relies for defense, and which is the chief source of his unpopularity, while it affords good reasons against cultivating him as a pet, and mars his attractiveness as game, is by no means the greatest indignity that can be offered to a nose. It is a rank, living smell, and has none of the sickening qualities of disease or putrefaction. Indeed, I think a good smeller will enjoy its most refined intensity. It approaches the sublime, and makes the nose tingle. It is tonic and bracing, and, I can readily believe, has rare medicinal qualities. I do not recommend its use as eye-water, though an old farmer assures me it has undoubted virtues when thus applied. Hearing, one night, a disturbance among his hens, he rushed out to catch the thief, when Sir Mephitis...discharged the vials of his wrath full in the farmer's face, and with such admirable effect that, for a few moments, he was completely blinded...But he declared that afterwards his eyes felt as if purged by fire, and his sight was much clearer."

Muskrat:"It sometimes looks as if the muskrat were weather-wise and could forecast the coming season. I doubt if a long series of observations would bear out the truth of this remark, yet I have noticed that in his nest-building he sometimes hits the mark with surprising accuracy...In the fall of 1880, while the weather-wise were wagging their heads, some forecasting a mild, some a severe winter, I watched with interest for a sign from my muskrats. About November 1, a month earlier than the previous year, they began their nest, and worked at it with a will...When the cold wave struck us, about November 20, my four-legged 'I told-you-so's' had nearly completed their dwelling...I approached their nest at this time, a white mound upon the white, deeply frozen surface of the pond, and wondered if there was any life in that apparent sepulchre. I thrust my walking-stick sharply into it, when there was a rustle and a splash into the water, as the occupant made his escape. What a damp basement that house has, I thought, and what a pity to rout a peaceful neighbor out of his bed in this weather, and into such a state of things as this!"

Porcupine: "One day my boy and I encountered a porcupine on the top of one of the Catskills, and we had a little circus with him; we wanted to wake him up, and make him show a little excitement, if possible. Without violence or injury to him, we succeeded to the extent of making his eyes fairly stand out from his head, but quicken his motion he would not, - probably could not.

"What astonished and alarmed him seemed to be that his quills had no effect upon his enemies; they laughed at his weapons. He stuck his head under a rock and left his back and tail exposed. This is the porcupine's favorite position of defense. 'Now come if you dare,' he seems to say...

"With a rotten stick we sprang the animal's tail again and again, till its supply of quills began to run low, and the creature grew uneasy. 'What does this mean?' he seemed to say, his excitement rising...When we finally drew him forth with a forked stick, his eyes were ready to burst from his head. In what a peevish, injured tone the creature did complain of our unfair tactics...His game after we led him forth was to keep himself as much as possible in the shape of a ball, but with two sticks and a cord we finally threw him over on his back and exposed his quill-less and vulnerable side, when he fairly surrendered and seem to say, 'Now you may do with me as you like.' Then we laughed in his face and went our way."

BHL and Our Users: Robin Everly & the Smithsonian Institution Libraries

2011-11-08T07:20:00.003-05:00

This week, we feature one of the librarians at BHL partner institution, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Robin Everly, the Botany-Horticulture librarian for the Smithsonian, has played an extremely active role in the development and dissemination of BHL for the past several years. She has a unique perspective on the project, playing the role of both user (to perform library-related job requirements) and member of the team developing BHL. We are excited to share her interesting viewpoint on our blog!

What is your title and institutional affiliation (or alternative place of employment)?

I’m the Branch Librarian for the Botany-Horticulture Library at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Currently, I’m also serving as Board President of the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL) through May 2012.

How long have you been working in a library environment?

Pretty much my entire working life. In high school, I worked as a page for my local public library. Although I have a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Maryland, the jobs I applied for had to do with handling and organizing scientific information. Included in this mix were working at the National Cancer Institute’s then called Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, which handled drug development; a short lived pesticide risk assessment position; and working as a database indexer for the AGRICOLA database at the National Agricultural Library (NAL). While working at NAL, I decided to make working in the information field official by getting an MLS. My goal was to work as a science reference librarian, and its one of the best decisions I ever made.

When did you first discover BHL?

As a botanical librarian working at the U.S. National Arboretum, I would use Botanicus, a database developed at the Missouri Botanic Garden. Around 2007 or 2008, I kept hearing about the Biodiversity Heritage Library database and wondered how it differed from Botanicus. In January 2008, I attended a presentation by Martin Kalfatovic and Suzanne Pilsk on BHL at NAL and learned what I thought were pretty ambitious plans for getting more content. There I also learned about plans for BHL to eventually have the majority of botanical literature in it and for Botanicus to hold a certain subset.

It’s hard to believe that BHL has only been around for the last 5 years or so. It’s made such a huge impact on taxonomy –both botanical and zoological; timewise,it feels like it has been around a lot longer.

What is your current level of involvement in BHL?

I serve on the BHL Collections Committee, which has a member from each BHL library on it. I represent the Smithsonian Institution Libraries on the committee. I’m also on an in-house SIL taskforce group which meets at least once a month. Plus, I’m also a big advocate of the data base and try to promote it whenever I can to our library visitors and staff here at the Smithsonian.

What is your opinion of BHL and what impact has it had on your duties as a librarian?

BHL is a wonderful project. In my opinion, it’s the librarians’ and libraries’ way to contribute to plant and animal conservation. It’s a project that helps researchers based in the developing world - where most plant biodiversity is found - conduct their research more quickly and easily. Since most of the printed taxonomic literature is in North America and Europe, this project brings the literature, literally to a researcher’s fingertips at his/her desktop, anywhere in the world you have an internet data connection. And the best part is: it's freely available. Our foreign visitors are especially impressed with the database and all the books and journals that are available on line. I only heard compliments about the database when I was at the recent International Botanical Congress in Melbourne, Australia. It’s very gratifying to get such a positive response from your users on a product developed partly at your institution.

As a librarian, it has made my job easier because I don’t need to request an article or book through interlibrary loan if it is in BHL; I just send the requester the URL. Also, if the print copy is fragile, acidic or even brittle, it allows for that copy to be handled only under special circumstances. The electronic copy is serving as a kind of “preservation tool” in this case. BHL is organized in such a way that it is easy to explain to a user how to search it and find the information they need.

Years ago, I went into science because I wanted to be a researcher involved in animal conservation. Although I have never achieved that goal, by participating in BHL as a librarian, I’m helping the researchers who are involved in both plant and animal conservation conduct their research. I found this a very rewarding part of my job.

Book of the Week: Voyages to South America

2011-11-03T09:32:00.010-04:00

This week for our book of the week, we feature a title that Charles Darwin himself called "one of the great monuments of science in the 19th century." The book? Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale (1835-47), by Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny. The work chronicles d'Orbigny's travels to South America for the Paris Museum from 1826-1833. As a result of this voyage, d'Orbigny returned to Paris with more than 10,000 natural history specimens.

Alcide d'Orbigny was a French naturalist born in 1802 that studied a variety of fields including zoology, paleontology, geology, archaeology, and anthropology. He was born to a ship's physician and naturalist, which made his choice of occupation a natural one. When his family moved to La Rochelle in 1820, d'Orbigny's interest in natural history was nourished as he began to study the marine fauna in that area. Shortly thereafter he moved to Paris, where he closely studied the work of Georges Cuvier.

d'Orbigny's mission to South America included visits to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. d'Orbigny described some of the 10,000 specimens he collected in our book of the week, Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale, which was published in 90 fascicles. As mentioned, Darwin highly praised the work, and d'Orbigny even named select species after him. For instance, the common name of Rhea pennata is Darwin's Rhea.

After 1840, d'Orbigny focused his attention on fossils, publishing two important titles on the subject between 1840 and 1850. In 1853, he became a professor of paleontology at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The position of Chair of Paleontology was created especially for him, and his geological timescales and strata are still used today as chronostratigraphic reference.

For our post, we're featuring some of the species that d'Orbigny described as a result of his voyage to South America, particularly those contained in v.9 of the title. You can see all of the images from this volume on our Flickr site, and be sure to check out a few of the other volumes from the title that we have in BHL.

Geoffroy's Cat (Leopardus geoffroyi): A wild cat found in Southern and Central South America that is about the size of a domestic house cat. While fairly abundant, issues over land-use changes in its habitat, as well as intense international fur trade in the 1960s-80s, results in this species being listed as "Near Threatened" by the IUCN.

Xantho planus: A crab species of the family Xanthidae, the largest crab family in terms of species richness, with 572 species and 133 genera. Species of Xanthidae are commonly called mud crabs, pebble crabs or rubble crabs. They are poisonous, containing a toxin, similar to that produced by puffer fish, for which there is no antidote and which is not destroyed by cooking.

Porcupine River Stingray (Potamotrygon hystrix): This species is found within marshy, freshwater zones of the Paraná-Paraguay River basin. When it remains perfectly immobile, partially covered by sand, and exercising homochromy (a process of protective coloration that allows the animal to blend into its environment), this species is practically undetectable to the eye. Its tail contains 1 or more spines, which are covered in a toxic mucus that inflicts painful wounds.

Blue-banded Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus coeruleicinctis - Top Figure): This species of Toucanet lives in Bolivia and Peru. Members of the Toucan family, Toucanets are near-passerine or high land-birds, meaning that they are arboreal birds believed to be related to true passerines. Passerines, which are of the order Passeriformes, include more than half of all bird species, with over 5,000 identified species. This is approximately twice as many species as that contained in the largest mammal order, Rodentia, and, with over 110 families, it has the second most families of any order of vertebrates, after Perciformes (bony fish).

Book of the Week: Halloween, Witches, and Cattle

2011-10-27T11:47:00.007-04:00

It's almost Halloween, and to celebrate, we wanted to feature a book that properly connoted the Halloween spirit. What did we find? Observations Suggested by the Cattle Plague, About Witchcraft, Credulity, Superstition, Parliamentary Reform, and Other Matters (1866), by H. Strickland Constable. This book is a delightful, tongue-in-cheek discussion of the unconventional cures for ailments and diseases that were popularly accepted during the time period. You might be asking, why is this kind of a book in BHL? The answer: Cattle! The whole discussion around which the book is based relates to a outbreak of Cattle Plague that was sweeping the globe, and Mr. Constable had quite a few things to say about some of the methods employed by citizens attempting to protect their livestock from such a devastating catastrophe.

For our post, we want to concentrate on the first chapter, entitled "Charms-Witchcraft-International Veterinary Congress." Mr. Constable starts by observing that, over the past year, there had been many "valuable precautionary measures" utilized by various cattle ranchers and farmers to protect their livestock from the deadly outbreak of the plague (called Rinderpest). These included "hanging camphor bags or strings of onions round the necks of all healthy animals, painting their noses with tar, etc." Apparently, all such measures had met with "great success!" Mr. Constable points out, however, that he was surprised at the apparent lack of awareness that many people demonstrated regarding similar devices that were used in the past, and this is where things really start to get good.

Since people seemed to be largely unaware of the methods taken over previous centuries to protect against ailment and disease, Mr. Constable makes sure to enlighten us. He facetiously demands, if onions and camphor are already being used, that these alternative methods also "ought at least to have been tried." For instance, there is the use of the word "Abracadabra," which, according to Serenus Sammonicus, is "of the very utmost value in all cases of...fever." And then one must consider the use of precious stones. Camillus Leonardus asserted that emeralds prevent epilepsy and "unmask the delusions of the devil," serpentine cures dropsy ("because if people stand with it in a very hot sun for three hours, they break out into a profuse perspiration"), red coral "strengthens digestion," red cornelian cures dysentery, green jasper prevents fever, and chrysolite "held in the hand cures fever." Mr. Constable asserts that, since Rinderpest is a fever, chrysolite and green jasper should be tied around the cattle's neck.

And, since we're talking about unconventional methods, why not bring witchcraft into the mix? Constable states that the 1489 book of witchcraft, Hexenhammer, "teaches witches how to make magic ointment for the destruction of cattle," which can be applied to cow-house door posts to spread the disease. And, while we're talking about witches, although it has nothing to do with cattle, Constable thought it fitting to bring up the 1669 incident in Sweden in which 62 witches were executed for bewitching children. It seems that, riding on goats, these witches would abduct children and take them to a rock in the sea called Blokula, after which they, the children, and the devil would "feast on cabbage and oatmeal porridge." However, only the older witches were allowed to feast. The younger witches "were set to take care of the toads and keep them in order with long, white sticks." And if that wasn't enough, for his amusement the devil would "make the witches ride on long poles, and then all at once he would pluck away the poles, when down would tumble the witches, to his very great glee."

Constable ends the chapter by discussing, with extreme gusto, the Grand International Veterinary Congress, as recounted by Mr. Gamgee in "The Cattle Plague." It appears that the purpose of this Congress was largely to debate the origin of Rinderpest in German cattle, with some additional mention of scab, pigs, malignant disease in Stallions, and the keeping of dogs. Constable writes, "It is exceedingly entertaining. Such as charming farrago of antiquated ideas about contagion, infection, Government interference, official inspections, police regulations, veterinary supervision, restrictions on traffic, quarantine, inoculation, etc. etc., I could not have believed possible to find extant in any civilized country in this the nineteenth century." The conclusion of the Congress? Rinderpest comes only from Russian cattle, and that "the Russian cattle will impart the disease in any country, at any distance of time after leaving Russia, and without ever having any disease themselves."

So, what does our good Mr. Constable conclude after all of this speculation and discussion? He purports that the ridiculous ideas that people come up with to account for the occurrence of diseases like Rinderpest, and the fact that some individuals contract it while others don't, only occur as a result of people being unwilling to admit that they do not know where the diseases come from or how they work. Men instead prefer to concoct "idle theories" that blame witches and Russian cattle.

There are several more great chapters in this book, including topics such as the origin of Cholera, "erroneous popular notions about disease," utilitarianism, and metaphysics. As you prepare for your Halloween celebrations, maybe you should consider wearing a nice necklace of onion or camphor to protect yourself against all that rampant Rinderpest! Happy Halloween! (And, for your ghoulish Halloween delight, we thought we'd share this lovely image of a spider ensnaring it's prey. See more spider images in our Flickr account).

What's in a Logo? Our Users Speak

2011-10-25T11:34:00.012-04:00

Several months ago, we introduced a new BHL logo, and to publicize the event, we published a blog post that detailed the various images that BHL Staff Members saw within the abstract lines of our new logo. At the end of the post, we asked our users to share their interpretations of the logo with us as well. Many of you did, and, as promised, we're sharing those today. We send a special thanks to all of you who shared your thoughts with us, and if our logo inspires other ideas, don't hesitate to share them by commenting on this blog, sending us a tweet (@BioDivLibrary), or posting on our Facebook wall.

1) Water: Two users, Aloysius Horn and an anonymous user, left comments on our previous blog post indicating the logo looked like water/waves to them.

2) Mountains: Via a comment left on a our blog, John told us that our new logo reminded him of mountains.

3) Butterfly Wings: Sanlin replied, via Twitter, that our logo looked like the flapping wings of a butterfly.

4) Humpback Whale Tail: Peter Desmet commented via our previous blog post that our logo is "obviously the tail of a humpback whale disappearing behind the waves."

5) Flower: An anonymous user on our blog suggested that the logo looks like the petals of a flower.

6) Our final suggestion involved our former logo, which contained a double-helix and a butterfly. Matt Person (a BHL staff member at MBL-WHOI) told us via Twitter that, in the new logo, he envisioned "a great double helix about to emerge from the center of the logo with a butterfly darting about the top of it."

Book of the Week: Living Sea Mammoths of Myth and Legend

2011-10-20T09:30:00.001-04:00

This week, while browsing our Flickr site (which, by the way, has over 15,900 images!), we stumbled across the book Field Book of Giant Fishes (1949), by J.R. Norman and F.C. Fraser, and were intrigued. What exactly was a giant fish by this book's standards, and what would we find when we delved into the pages of this enigmatic title?

To our delight, we found some surprising species featured within this volume. Species that make you think, "Maybe we aren't too far off from the dinosaurs." Some even include creatures that might be responsible for many of the "sea monster" claims sailors have made over the years. Plus, as is always a bonus for us, the descriptions were accompanied by lovely illustrations (by W.P.C. Tenison) of the mighty fish that call our oceans home today. We thought this title offered a great opportunity to showcase some of these aquatic marvels. So, without further ado...

1) Giant Oar-Fish, also known as the King of Herrings. This critter is the world's longest bony fish, reaching up to 17 meters and weighing upwards of 300 kg! Living 300-1000 meters below the ocean's surface, it is a rarely-seen deep sea wonder. Nevertheless, many scientists believe that this colossal beast may be responsible for many of the strange sea monster sightings reported throughout the years.

Despite the scarcity of sightings, there are several documented encounters with this species:

On Dec. 10, 2010, a live specimen measuring 4 meters was caught off the Sinaloan coast of Mexico. One of the fisherman who caught it cautioned that "it might be the devil" and "feared it might swallow them."
On April 6, 2011, a 3.5 meter Giant Oar-Fish was found off of the east coast of Taiwan. It is believed that the creature surfaced as a result of the tsunami that hit Japan in March. Thus, it was given the nickname "Earthquake Fish."
And finally, in 1996, a 7-meter specimen was caught off of the coast of California. Pictured below is a team of Navy SEALs displaying the beast. (Image from pg. 20, All Hands)

2) Blue Whale. So, everyone's familiar with the Blue Whale - the largest animal on the face of the planet, and, for that matter, the largest animal known to have ever existed. (Take that, Dinosaurs!). At 30 meters long and 180 metrics tons, this creature is truly a behemoth. However, despite its size, the Blue Whale's diet consists completely of small crustaceans called krill.

Some very interesting facts about the Blue Whale:

It's tongue weighs as much as an elephant (which, incidentally, is the largest living land mammal)
When fully expanded, a Blue Whale's mouth is large enough to hold 90 metrics tons of food and water
Despite this large mouth, the Whale's throat is so small that it cannot swallow anything larger than a beach ball
At birth, Blue Whales weigh 6,000 lbs - the weight of a full-grown hippopotamus - and drink an average of 100 gallons of milk every day
Blue Whale calves gain as much as 200 lbs every day
A Blue Whale's Heart weighs 1,300 lbs.

3) Narwhal. Although not a mammoth in proportions, this sea critter nevertheless has many links to mythological associations. For obvious reasons, it is known as the "sea unicorn," and Medieval Europeans believed that these "unicorn" horns possessed magical powers, such as the ability to cure poison and melancholia. The Inuit people believe the Narwhal tusk came about when "a women with a harpoon rope tied around her waist was dragged into the ocean after the harpoon had struck a large narwhal. She was transformed into a Narwhal herself, and her hair, which she was wearing in a twisted knot, became the characteristic spiral Narwhal tusk."

The Narwhal is most closely related to the Beluga Whale, and together they make up the only two living species of the Monodontidae family
Narwhals are a strictly Arctic species, and rarely venture below 65 degrees North latitude
The Narwhal's name comes from the Old Norse word "nár," which means "corpse." It was given this name due to its grayish pigmentation, which gave it the appearance of a drowned sailor.
A male Narwhal's tusk can grow as long as 3 meters and weigh up to 22 lbs. About 1 in 500 male Narwhals grows a second tusk.
In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth was given a carved and bejeweled Narwhal tusk worth £10,000 - the cost of, in those times, an entire castle!
The Narwhal is one of two possible explanations for the "giant sea phenomenon" described by Jules Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. (The other possibility? A man-made vessel. We like the Narwhal option better!)

We hope you've enjoyed these fun facts about some surprising creatures from the sea. Don't forget that these are only a few of the animals pictured in our book of the week, Field Book of Giant Fishes (1949), by J.R. Norman and F.C. Fraser. The color illustrations from this book can be found on our Flickr site, but there are also dozens of smaller, ink drawings within the actual text, so be sure to check out the book in BHL as well!And remember, it might not be the age of the dinosaurs, but we've still got some mammoths living among us!

BHL and Our Users: Dr. Francisco Welter-Schultes

2011-10-13T07:00:00.002-04:00

This week, we feature one of our colleagues from "across the pond," as we like to say. Meet Dr. Francisco Welter-Schultes, whose many accomplishments include studying mollusks at the University of Goettingen, initiating and running the AnimalBase project, and, last but certainly not least, participating in the BHL-Europe project!

What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest?

I am a biologist interested in terrestrial molluscs of Europe, working in or affiliated to the University of Goettingen, Germany (I have a small office there and sometimes I am also paid...). Like many researchers in the field of taxonomy and species identification, I had to collect a lot of literature to get to know what many others did before I came in. In passing by I became skilled in writing bibliographies and finding literature. In 2003 I initiated the AnimalBase project to scan literature (from Goettingen Library resources) and create a database to link zoological names with their original descriptions.

How long have you been in your field of study?

First systematic fieldwork in 1985; scientifically since 1990.

When did you first discover BHL?

Must have been in 2005 or 2006. It was part of my job to check if literature was already online somewhere else so that we would not need to scan it in the AnimalBase project. I guess I must have been one of the first regular users of BHL.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?

My mollusc research became much faster and more efficient since I have been able to check sources online. Not only BHL, also Google Books and other providers, and of course sources provided by BHL-Europe consortium members including our own content (Goettingen), which we hope will some day be accessible in one big portal. Before 2005 I had to go to the library and order book by book, implying delays of several days between research actions. Today this goes much faster. About 70% of the sources I currently need to verify in my mollusc research are BHL sources. I use Google Books only if BHL does not have the title (or if the title does not show up in my BHL search).

How often do you use BHL?

Practically every day of work.

How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Select Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.)?

I usually read the titles online. I usually know exactly what I am looking for. In most cases it's only checking one or two pages in a title (I know exactly which ones) and then closing the site. The BHL website does not work well on my notebook, and the PDF download function does not work.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

A very good default search function - very efficient; I really like it. Page level scrollbox in the online viewer, very useful. Makes my work really quick. I provide links to BHL resources from the AnimalBase website and appreciate that BHL links to items have been stable from the beginning on. I also appreciate very much that BHL is very rarely offline!

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

Improving bibliography metadata (journal volume numbers and years) and most important: page-level metadata. Missing plate numbers and Roman pages in the page-level metadata are a big problem. The page-level scrollbox is very important for my work.

Online book viewer should be faster; black and white text pages should be shown instead of brown on tan.

"Scanning more pages" is too easily said, and such a suggestion would not be a good guide for you. "Filling the gaps in serial runs" would be a more useful approach. Actually this is the contrary of "scanning more pages" because identifying gaps in serial runs and scanning single journal volumes is much more expensive than simple and brainless mass digitisation.

If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why?

There are some titles that I consult repeatedly, which are simply the important monographs of European terrestrial Malacology of the late 1880s (Westerlund 1884-1890 and Pfeiffer's Monographia Heliceorum 1848-1877). Boring for the non-insider. From my experience in researching rare titles I have occasionally found really rare titles in BHL, about which I was very surprised and happy! They were titles I had found to exist only in very few libraries in the world, and I had not suspected BHL had them. These were real BHL highlights.

Thank you, Dr. Welter-Schultes, for giving us a brief glimpse into your life, work, and relationship with BHL! Improving our page-level metadata is certainly a priority for us, and, slowly but surely, we are making our way through the millions of pages in our collection. If there are specific titles for which you'd like to see the pagination improved, please let us know via our Feedback Form! Similarly, as we work to fill gaps in our collection, if there are any specific volumes from specific titles that you'd like us to add, please don't hesitate to let us know as well.

To learn more about Dr. Welter-Schultes, visit his website. Be sure to check out the BHL-Europe website as well! We look forward to future collaborations and the opportunity to share our resources with our friends on the continent and around the world!

Image Sizes in BHL. SEE ALSO: Piece of String, Length of.

2011-10-11T07:40:00.000-04:00

“How long is a piece of string?” isn’t a familiar idiom to those living in the Midwest of the continental United States. Well, it wasn’t to at least one person living in the Midwest. It’s the answer you’ll get in the BHL AU office to questions like “How long does it take to build a website?” or any other question to which there isn’t a definitive answer for the general case, like “How big is a page image in BHL?”

Of course another way of answering would be “It depends”. To take two completely random examples, this page from Prodromus of the zoology of Victoria is 1828 pixels wide by 2879 pixels high. This page from Australian Lepidoptera and their transformations is 3496 pixels wide by 4785 pixels high.

Now, I’m sure you’ve gotten familiar with BHL’s API while you’ve been putting together your entry for the Life and Literature code challenge. I know you’re working hard on your entry, ‘cause it’s what all the other cool kids are doing.

You don’t need me to tell you that when you use the API to get an item’s metadata with the page flag set to true, you get a url for a thumbnail image and an url for the full size of each page. Which is fantastic, if you want an image that will fit into a 200px by 300px box, or an IOUS (image of unusual size). What if you want an images that will fit into a 600px by 800px box? Do you get the thumbnail and scale it up? Yes, but only if you’re doing it in a bad police procedural that creates image information from nowhere. In the real world, you need to get the full size image and downsize it. Until now.

Now you can get your Astacoides serratus at a range of sizes to suit your budget. Simply add the width and height of your bounding box at the end of the thumbnail image url, and Bob's your uncle. So, if you want an image to fit into a 600px by 800px box, instead of using the thumbnail url as is (http://bhl.ala.org.au/pagethumb/5221137), use http://bhl.ala.org.au/pagethumb/5221137,600,800 and you’ll get back an image that’s exactly 914px by 1440px.

Okay, I know that a 914px by 1440px image doesn’t fit into a 600px by 800px box. You’re still going to have to scale the image down to 508px by 800px to fit, but at least you only have to download a third of the information compared to the full size image (148kB vs 436kB). So why aren't we providing an image of A. serratus at 508px by 800px?

Rather than have the server scale the full size image for each request, images are available at fixed fractions of the original dimensions. The fractions available are a half, a quarter, an eighth and a 16th. Those are fractions of the width and height, so each step down has only a quarter as many pixels as the one before.

The server will give you the smallest image available that won’t need to be scaled up to fit within your bounds. So, using our old mate A. serratus as the example, if you specified a bounding box of 915px x 1441px, you'd get the full size image at 1828px x 2879px. If you don’t provide a width and height, the assumed size of the bounding box is 200px by 300px.

I’ve got to be honest, while all the links point to the Australian node, the heavy lifting for this was done by the good folks at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/. You can replace bhl.ala.org.au with www.biodiversitylibrary.org and get exactly the same results.

Have fun playing with the images, and I look forward to seeing how you put it to good use.

Book of the Week: Bridging the Gap Between Science & Art

2011-10-06T10:00:00.000-04:00

By this point, if you've been following our "Books of the Week" regularly, you know that 18th, 19th, and 20th century taxonomic works weren't just about the nomenclature they presented, but also the stunning illustrations accompanying these species descriptions. Those books with the most colorful, the most visually dynamic, images are those that we tend to gravitate towards for our posts. So, when we came across a book that has been described as "bridging the gap between science and art," we simply had to feature it. That book, perhaps one of the most visually-compelling that we've yet featured, is Kunstformen der Natur (1904), by Ernst Haeckel.

Over the course of his career, Haeckel, a German biologist, described and named thousands of new species, popularized the work of Charles Darwin in Germany, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and produced dozens of glorious illustrations. In his lifetime alone, over 1000 prints were made of Haeckel's sketches, 100 of which are found within Kunstformen der Natur. These 100 prints were translated from sketch to lithograph by artist Adolf Giltsch.

Cnidaria, which include sea anemones, jellyfish, and coral, as well as Radiolarians, which are protozoan zooplankton, are some of the most abundant species illustrated within this work. The book was originally published as ten sets from 1899-1904, and was then re-published as a complete work in 1904. Haeckel scholar Olaf Breidbach eloquently wrote that this title is "not just a book of illustrations but also the summation of [Haeckel's] view of the world."

What was to us perhaps the most impressive aspect of the images in Kunstformen der Natur was not simply the radiant colors and depth of realism within the creatures depicted, but the way in which each plate was composed, symmetrically balancing each inch of space and arranging each organism artistically beside or around the others so as to not only catch the viewer's eye, but dynamically draw him in and keep him constantly engaged. Never before or since has plankton been portrayed with such charm and beauty.

While we cannot feature all 100 of the illustrations within this work in this post, we can at least highlight some of our favorites. And, thanks to the BHL Flickr account, which now has over 13,000 images, you can see all of the remaining illustrations displayed for you on one convenient canvas. We hope that you'll find this title as richly rewarding as we did.

New Article Download Features

2011-09-29T14:40:00.002-04:00

We first launched our article download functionality back in January of 2009, giving users the ability to create their own PDF of selected pages from an item in BHL. Since that time, over 79,000 articles have been created by our users. That's an average of 80 articles created each day (thanks WolframAlpha.com)! Clearly the ability to create your own PDF of selected pages, rather than download the entire book or volume, is a useful service; something we have been working on to make improvements whenever possible.

Today we are releasing new features that will make it easier for you to create your own articles:

We've simplified the start page for the PDF Generator to make the process more efficient.
We've added a Yes/No option, asking if users are interested in contributing the content they are creating to BHL's citation repository, CiteBank http://www.citebank.org. CiteBank is a domain-specific repository of citations and content files about biodiversity. It evolved out of a need to access content from the BHL at a more granular level. CiteBank is a work in progress and continues to develop its collection and services. By contributing title, author and subject data to the PDF you are creating, you will allow other users to gain access to this content through CiteBank.
Selecting "Yes" will allow you to enter the title, author and/or keyword data we need to index the content in our citation repository. Selecting "No" will skip over this step, eliminating any opportunity for other users to benefit from the content you've already taken the time to create (please say Yes!).
Drawing from the functionality provided by our colleagues on the BHL-Australia web site, http://bhl.ala.org.au, we have added the ability for you to review your page selections before you generate your PDF. You will also have the opportunity to review the title, author and/or keyword data you've provided and make any necessary corrections/edits.

We surveyed some of our most active PDF creators and received positive feedback about these changes and many good ideas about changes that could be made for the future. As always, we welcome input from our users, especially regarding the changes we make in an effort to improve BHL functionality and services. If you have any questions/comments, please do not hesitate to send us your feedback or comment directly to this post.

- Bianca Crowley, BHL Collections Coordinator

BHL and Our Users: Megan Raby and the History of Biology

2011-09-27T10:16:00.005-04:00

Taking a break from our miniseries of the past few months, featuring EOL Rubenstein fellows, this week we feature Megan Raby, who uses BHL to support her research involving the history of biology.

What is your title, institutional affiliation (or alternative place of employment), and area of interest?

I am a dissertator in the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My dissertation focuses on the history of American involvement in tropical biology in the Caribbean in the early twentieth century. I’m interested in the intersection of the history of biology and environmental history, and the role of science in the changing relationships between the US and the rest of the world.

How long have you been in your field of study?

I began to get interested in graduate work in the history of science while finishing my BS in Earth Sciences at Montana State University. That would make it about 7 years.

When did you first discover BHL?

I’m not quite sure when I first stumbled upon the site, but certainly over the past 4 years I have begun to use it more consciously.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?

It has been incredibly helpful. While we have a wonderful library system here at UW, there are times when I just need a quick look at a relatively obscure volume. Checking it online rather than running over to a library or having to ILL saves me a lot of time. Actually though, I have found it most useful to be able to search within texts, in conjunction with the physical book. For example, I went through many decades of the Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution while holed up in the Wisconsin Historical Society stacks, but I searched with BHL alongside. It’s easier and faster to read the physical copy, and flip between text and contents when you are sure the information you are looking for is in there. But searching the text electronically can help you find references that are not expected from the contents or index. I’ll also mention that I found a couple scanning errors while going through the Smithsonian annual reports, and BHL fixed them immediately. It was amazing. One point I want to make is that BHL doesn’t replace the original books––but it does make them easier to find and use. I really see physical libraries and BHL as complementary tools.

How often do you use BHL?

Depending on what phase of research I am in, it could be from a few times a month to a few times a day.

How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Selecting Pages to Download/etc.)

I usually download whole PDFs, because it is easier to search within the whole text, and take notes, this way. If I am looking for a particular piece of information, or just skimming to see if a text might be useful, then I read online. I have sometimes made custom PDFs for articles within larger volumes.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

I am just glad that so many of the kinds of texts I need are accessible there, from expedition reports and regional floras, to the bulletins of various botanical gardens and museums. I am happy that they can be downloaded as PDFs which makes reading, searching, and note-taking very easy. I also like the links to BHL from http://plants.jstor.org.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

First, it would be amazing to be able to search in-text across multiple volumes. As it is, I either come to BHL looking for a particular text or else happen upon one through a Google search. Subject terms and titles are useful, but sometimes I am looking for very brief references within the text that would not show up in a subject term. Being able to search across the texts in BHL would help me find surprising and unexpected references. Second, it is currently a bit difficult to find articles within larger volumes unless you already know where they are. You can go through each volume of the Bulletin of the New York Botanical Garden individually and search, but you can’t see or search the titles or authors of articles within volumes using advanced search. Finally, tools similar to Google Ngrams or JSTOR Data For Research would allow you to take advantage of the texts in aggregate. I would love to be able to graph references to tropical organisms, or to terms related to ideas about tropical “biodiversity,” over time using the BHL sources.

If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why?

That’s a tough one. Probably the Smithsonian annual reports have been the most useful, as they helped me get a solid chronology for one part of my dissertation when I was just starting. But I will mention another “neat” source I used in the chapter I just wrote: Living Plants and Their Properties: A Collection of Essays, edited by Joseph Charles Arthur and Daniel T. MacDougal, 1898. In it, I was able to find a reprint of a talk, “Mimosa: A Typical Sensitive Plant,” that MacDougal, an American botanist, gave to a Jamaican natural history society while in the colony looking for a potential site to establish an American tropical research station. I had not known at the time that a copy of that talk was available in print, and it gave me evidence about why MacDougal thought more research needed to be done on living tropical plants in their own environments, as well as how he interacted with scientists in Jamaica. Also, the book includes some articles in which J. C. Arthur muses about whether plants can feel pain––but that will have to wait for another research project!

Thanks, Megan, for giving us a glimpse into your work and the role BHL plays in your research! You may be interested in some of the work Roderic Page has been doing graphing the occurrence of names in literature over time using BHL or Ryan Schenk's work visualizing taxonomic synonyms over time, as you mentioned that you would love to "graph references to tropical organisms, or to terms related to ideas about tropical “biodiversity,” over time using the BHL sources." Additionally, the Code Challenge for the Life and Literature Conference that BHL is hosting (Nov. 14-15, Chicago, IL), which encourages individuals to submit applications that provide new or interesting ways to use or display BHL data, might yield further innovative, graphical interactions with our information. Until then, we hope that BHL continues to meet your research needs as we also continue to develop and improve our services!

Book of the Week: Birds and Their Nests

2011-09-22T08:40:00.010-04:00

Have you ever been out and about, enjoying the beauty of nature, looked up in a tree, noticed a bird's nest, and wondered what species of bird made the nest? If so, and if you happen to live in Ohio, or somewhere close to it, we've got the book for you: Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio (1886), v.1-2, text by Howard Jones and illustrations by a variety of artists, including Miss Genevieve Estelle Jones, Miss Eliza J. Schulze, Mrs. N. E. Jones, Miss Nellie D. Jacob, Miss Josephine Klippart and Miss Kate Gephart. What really struck us about this book was the charming nature of the illustrations. And after reading the preface, it became quite clear that obtaining these illustrations for the work was no easy task.

In 1877, Genevieve Jones decided to create a series of plates for a publication depicting the nests and eggs of Ohio birds. She enlisted the help of close friend Eliza Schulze, and together the two women, amateur artists but having no formal training, embarked on the

venture. To make matters more complicated, the plates themselves needed to be completed as lithographs so that they could be printed for mass production - a method that neither lady was familiar with. However, after many months of practice, Miss Jones and Miss Schulze produced plates 1-3, and these, along with the accompanying text by Howard Jones, were sent to publication in 1879. Favorably received, the ladies continued their partnership.

Unfortunately, on August 17th, 1879, Genevieve Jones died of typhoid fever. Desiring to continue the work, Miss Schulze enlisted the help of Genevieve's mother, Mrs. N. E. Jones. Eventually, Miss Schulze relinquished all of her interests in the title to Mrs. Jones. Determined to move forward, Mrs. Jones undertook the responsibility for all of the illustrations herself, eventually employing three additional artists, Miss Nellie D. Jacob, Miss Josephine Klippart, and Miss Kate Gephart. Despite all the hardships encountered over the life of this publication, the authors and artists were thankful and proud of the work, remarking,

"Aside from the entertainment and instruction accompanying the study of birds in their homes, and the delineation of their various styles of architecture, it has been a great pleasure to us to continue to completion an undertaking so unfortunately interrupted at almost its very beginning. It has also been a satisfaction to us to know that, however poor our efforts, we were breaking new ground in a field, which, with the cultivation of time, will yield a rich and beautiful harvest."

For our post, we're featuring a few of the nest illustrations found in this title, identifying them for the bird species to which they correlate. However, we'll leave the last picture unidentified. Can you tell which bird species made the nest below (of course, you could always just check in the book, but where's the fun in that)? Let us know what species you think it is via Twitter (@BioDivLibrary), Facebook, or by leaving a comment on this blog. To see all of the images from this title, visit the set in Flickr: v. 1 and v. 2.

Another Way for You to Help BHL: Make a Donation

2011-09-20T08:50:00.001-04:00

Funding for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) comes from a number of sources. Over the past few years, we have been reliant on the generous support of a number of different foundations, directly or through grants to individual BHL members. These foundations include the MacArthur Foundation, the Moore Foundation, the Lounsberry Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Keck Foundation. A number of the BHL members have also received grants from the United States government, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Science Foundation.

2011 marked the fourth year since the BHL portal officially went live, and in that time we've made great strides, just recently reaching 35 million scanned pages. Scientists all over the world use the library to identify and classify new species. The student in her backyard, the forestry manager and ecologist, the museum habitat builder, the artist and the designer – whether the need is for a scientific description of a spider or a beautifully illustrated drawing of an amaryllis, all can benefit from being able to search the biodiversity literature.

As part of the initial redesign of the BHL site, we are now offering the ability for individuals to support the BHL. These transactions are processed through the Smithsonian Institution Libraries' (SIL) financial system. The SIL hosts the BHL Secretariat and program staff. The Smithsonian Institution is a tax-exempt organization and gifts are tax deductible.

Click on the button on any BHL page (or click here now!) to add your donation to your shopping cart. You can donate preset amounts, or, using the "other" option, a custom amount of your choice.

It is our mission to provide free and open access to biodiversity literature for the long term. With demonstrated support from our users, both in terms of financial contributions and praise, we can continue to seek funding from major foundations, government bodies, BHL member libraries, and private donors. Donations from our users, no matter how small, go a long way in showing how important the BHL is to your work. We thank you, in advance, for considering a donation in support of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Book of the Week: The Memory of a Museum Dissolved but Not Forgotten

2011-09-15T10:28:00.015-04:00

When Musei Leveriani Explicatio, Anblica et Latina (1792-96), by George Shaw, went up for auction at Christie's Auction House in April of 2008, it was described as "one of the most comprehensive natural history collections of the eighteenth century." It sold for $3,926 USD. The work documents the specimens found in Sir Ashton Lever's museum (the Museum Leverianum), which was originally housed in his home at Alkrington Hall. The book contains 72 hand-colored engraved plates after, among others, Charles Reuben Ryley, Sarah Stone, and Philip Reinagle. With such a claim as "most comprehensive natural history collection," we had to check it out, and the quality of the illustrations blew us away. So: Voila! Here you have our book of the week!

As stated, Sir Lever's museum, which comprised approximately 28,000 items, was originally housed in his home. However, hoping to make the museum self-financing, Lever moved the collection to Leicester House in London in 1774, opening it to the public in 1775 with an admission fee of half a guinea. The museum was popular but not as financially successful as Lever had hoped. In 1784, he was forced to

sell the collection, which had been valued at £53,000. He did so by public lottery. 8,000 tickets, priced at 1 guinea each, were sold. James Parkinson won the collection with a ticket purchased by his late wife. Parkinson successfully ran the museum until May of 1806, when, despite the continued popularity of the museum, he was also forced to sell the collection by piece at an auction lasting 65 days.

While the two volumes of this work on BHL contain dozens of gorgeous illustrations (all of which you can browse at your leisure on Flickr!), we've selected just a few of our favorites to feature here. Sir Lever and Mr. Parkinson would have been proud that, though the museum itself did not endure, a record of the enchanting and impressive specimens contained within it has lasted these 200+ years. And now, thanks to BHL and the modern digital era, you don't have to spend $4,000 at auction to enjoy the marvels that one composed the Museum Leverianum! All you need is a computer and Internet connection!

Musei Leveriani Explicatio, Anblica et Latina (1792-96), by George Shaw, was contributed by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. See the images from this book on Flickr!

BHL and Our Users: EOL Rubenstein Fellow, Dr. John Sullivan

2011-09-13T08:22:00.007-04:00

Today, we continue with our mini-series featuring EOL Rubenstein Fellows and their research activities. For this installment, meet Dr. John Sullivan, a passionate ichthyologist dedicated to discovering and describing fish species all over the world, but particularly in Africa.

What are your research interests, where you do the bulk of your work (country), and what is your institutional affiliation?

I am an evolutionary biologist who studies the phylogenetic interrelationships and evolution of freshwater fishes. I focus on two groups in particular: weakly electric fishes (Mormyridae and Gymnotiformes) which are found in Africa and South America, respectively, and catfishes (Siluriformes), which are distributed pretty much all over the world. In addition to using molecular techniques to work out phylogenies for these fishes, I describe species and work on the taxonomy of all three groups. My most recent collecting field trips have been to Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gabon. I am affiliated with two institutions, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where I am a Research Associate, and the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates in Ithaca, New York, where I am a Curatorial Affiliate. I live with my wife in Ithaca.

In the program, Fellowships are expected to serve as a complementary funding source to existing funding you have that supports your primary research activities. Please describe what you primary research activities are.

I used the Rubenstein Fellowship to supplement a nine-month Fulbright Research Fellowship in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My Fulbright work was to make an inventory of fish species found in the vicinity of Kisangani, a city on the Congo River at the base of the Upper Congo rapids and to help build capacity at the University of Kisangani in ichthyology. As a Rubenstein Fellow, I made creation of EOL species pages for Congo River freshwater fishes a key activity of my time there. And since my return from Congo, I’ve been continuing to add many of the hundreds of photographs of fish specimens I took as we identify the specimens. We’ve already found several undescribed species from our collections, and I and my colleagues are beginning work on their descriptions.

Please describe how you use EOL to disseminate or support your primary research activities, or what your primary duties related to EOL are.

Eventually, I’d like to see great photos, descriptions and keys available online through EOL for all African freshwater fishes. We still have a lot of work to do to get there, but one can now see that this is the future. It still takes a lot of time to do careful taxonomic work, but now as soon as it’s published, we can get the name into a classification and a picture and description up online. For instance, we got the new mormyrid species Petrocephalus similis into EOL the week it was published in July. Taxonomy is a dynamic discipline: names and classifications frequently change to reflect our improving knowledge of the organisms (a sometime annoyance to end-users of taxonomies, but unavoidable). So static books are in some ways poor repositories of this information. Taxonomy and the Web are really made for each other and in hindsight something like EOL was inevitable.

How has the EOL Fellows program made a difference in your career/research?

The Rubenstein EOL Fellows program gave me an easy way to help make knowledge about African fishes available to everyone, including Africans who often have internet access but nothing in the way of libraries. The more informed my African colleagues are about their own fish fauna, the more effective our collaborations can be. While it doesn’t take the place of getting published in the primary literature, contributing to EOL tells your colleagues that you’re committed to the “broader impacts” of what we taxonomists do and that you’re at the forefront of where the field of taxonomy is headed. I am looking forward to the day when publishing a new species description and publishing content on EOL are one and the same thing. In fact, that future is already here with the journal ZooKeys that automatically exports to EOL. We plan to use that journal for our next mormyrid description.

Who is your Mentor, what is their area of interest (research activities), and how have they supported you throughout your Fellowship?

My mentor is Dr. Melanie Stiassny, curator of fishes at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Melanie has really reinvigorated the study of fish diversity of the Congo River over the past few years and has made a number of stunning discoveries in the rapids area of the Lower Congo. She was great at providing me the logistical and moral support I needed for my project in Kisangani.

How does BHL support your Fellows activities, as well as those research activities that fall outside of your duties as an EOL Fellow?

I tend to think of BHL as my personal ichthyology library (although I know there’s a bit more archived in it than that). I have retrieved dozens and dozens of species descriptions from it that are now on my personal computer for instant reference and also appended to species pages in one of my two EOL Lifedesks: http://mormyrids.lifedesks.org/ and http://congofishes.lifedesks.org/.

I’ll give you a concrete example of how BHL supports my work. In systematics, the old literature is often just as important as the new. For instance, the systematics of a genus of mormyrid fish we work on was really blocked by our inability to establish the identity of Mormyrus sphekodes (now Paramormyrops sphekodes), described in 1879 by French ichthyologist H.E. Sauvage. The type specimen still exists, but is in bad condition in the Paris Museum collection. If we were to describe new species without knowing what P. sphekodes really was, we risked redescribing it under a different name and creating a synonym.

So this past May I arranged to go back to the type locality mentioned by Sauvage, the “Chutes de Doumé” on the Ogooué River in Gabon to make a new collection of it. I’m happy to report I succeeded! Before going there, I had downloaded Sauvage’s description of this fish from BHL, published in the Bulletin de la Société Philomatique de Paris. It had taken me just a few minutes to locate this paper and customize the pdf. I had it on my Kindle as I stood at the site, a place I don’t think ichthyologists had revisited since the 1870s.

When did you first discover BHL?

Some time before I started my Fellowship, probably in 2008.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

I love how it takes me no time at all to find a species description in some old serial like the Annals and Magazine of Natural History and, using the web interface, generate a pdf of just those pages that I want. Even if I lived in a library that had these volumes on the shelf, it would take me longer to locate what I was looking for. I can then take those pdfs BHL generates for me and attach them to the species pages I create on my Lifedesks. Now anybody in the world has instant access to the original species description in a couple of clicks!

If you could change one thing about BHL, or suggest one thing to be the next developmental priority for BHL, what would it be?

It seems like you are doing the right thing: continue to expand and add content. It is great to see a number of biodiversity journals allowing BHL to digitize their back catalog, including material still under copyright, and very encouraging to see BHL go international with BHL-Europe and other initiatives. Now that much of the really old stuff is available, it’s the material from the 1930’s – 1970’s that is notably hard to obtain if you don’t have a world-class library, so I hope more of it finds its way onto BHL in the near future.

Please describe why you think services like EOL and BHL are important for today’s scientific community.

Science is all about disseminating knowledge and building upon what has come before, yet so much of our knowledge of plants and animals has remained inaccessible to those who could make use of it. This has been a big part of the “taxonomic impediment.” BHL is radically changing this status quo and democratizing access to knowledge about biodiversity. Now that access to the works of so many great 18^th and 19^th Century biologists is an easy affair, I expect we’ll see them cited a lot more in the modern literature. In this way, BHL is contributing to the continuity of biodiversity science.

Do you have a favorite book in BHL, or a book that has most supported your research activities or EOL responsibilities?

My favorite book in BHL would have to be the four volumes of George Albert Boulenger’s Catalogue of the Fresh-Water Fishes of Africa, published from 1909 to 1916. This work remains the single-most important publication on African ichthyology. While many more species have been described in the subsequent century and generic names have undergone changes, it is still a remarkably useful resource for identifying African fishes. Until BHL made pdfs of all four volumes freely available, you had to pay dearly even for a reprinted version. Now all my African colleagues who never had these advantages have the pdfs on their laptops.

Thank you, Dr. Sullivan, for taking the time to give us a glimpse into your world and research, and for articulating how important BHL has been to your endeavors. As we continue to grow our collection, we hope to be able to establish more and more relationships with publishers and provide access to a plethora of in-copyright materials, freeing, as you so eloquently describe, this information from the static written page to the future of dynamic electronic access for the world.

Information on the photo from Dr. Sullivan: "The photo is of me on the Ogooué River in Gabon, Africa in May of this year. The site is a famous one for African ichthyology: it is the "Chutes de Doumé" from which H.-E. Sauvage described the catfish Doumea typica and the mormyrid electric fish Mormyrus sphekodes - now Paramormyrops sphekodes - (among others) in an 1879 publication published in the Bulletin de la Société philomathique de Paris, a pdf of which I downloaded from BHL!"

Book of the Week: Mollusks, Naples, and Anton Dohrn

2011-09-09T08:00:00.002-04:00

We're all about mollusks in our book of the week this week, with our featured title being one brimming with some really spectacular watercolors by Comingio Merculiano. What, you might ask, is the title of this exceptional work? I Cefalopodi Viventi nel Golfo di Napoli (Sistematica) (1896). While the copy on BHL consists of only the plates from this title, the entire volume (with text) constitutes the 35th monograph in the series Fauna and Flora of the Gulf of Naples, published by the Stazione Zoologica and consisting of 40 volumes in total. This particular monograph, written by Giuseppe Jatta, presents, as the name suggests, detailed information on the Cephalopods of the Mediterranean.

The Fauna and Flora series was the brain child of Anton Dohrn, prominent German Darwinist and founder of the Stazione Zoologica in Naples. In the winter of 1868, Dorhn and his colleague Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai conceived of the idea of a global network of zoological stations, in which scientists could visit various stations around the world, collect material, and conduct research in ready laboratories. The first of these stations, "Stazione Zoologica di Messina," consisted of two rented rooms in Messina, but impediments such as the absence of a library (oh, how they would have loved BHL!) and permanent trained personnel made it quickly apparent that the idea was wrought with difficulties.

In 1870, Dohrn moved the location of the station to Naples, as the breadth of biological richness in the Gulf of Naples, and the proximity to a large university, made it an extremely attractive location. This time, the station was a much greater success! Encouraged, Dohrn decided it was time to move on to another pet project, and one for which the Station was well-equipped to support. Burdened by the lack of systematic studies on marine fauna in the Mediterranean, Dohrn developed the Fauna and Flora of the Gulf of Naples project, assigning groups of marine organisms to subject experts with instructions to write a monograph on each of the assigned groups. Each monograph was to deal with the morphology, development, systematics or ecology of the topic assigned. Disappointed by the quality of scientific illustrations accompanying many of the monographs, Dohrn also hired professional artists to create illustrations for the works. As Dohrn explained in v. 48 of Nature,

"I wished to lay great stress upon illustrations. In looking over the existing iconography of the lower marine animals, and comparing them with those of the terrestrial animals, the inferiority of existing illustrations of the former was apparent, and especially as regards the reproduction of the colouring of the living marine organisms. Colour in animals may have relatively little scientific interest compared with structure, nevertheless it has a meaning, and its good reproduction facilitates greatly the recognition of the species. Besides, practical reasons spoke very much in favor of good coloured illustrations as a means to facilitate the sale of the monographs, which were to be published on subscription, and as the safest way for covering the great expenses which were to be incurred."

The first artist selected was Merculiano, who began his collaboration in 1885, and it is thanks to the incredible talent of this artist that we have such a glorious collection of illustrations to present this week! Indeed, Dohrn himself attributed the success of the series in large part to the quality of the illustrations contained within the volumes, which were reproduced for the publications via lithographs by Werner and Winter. We're certainly glad Dohrn decided to incur the costs of quality scientific artwork, and we hope you enjoy the few images we've selected for this post. Be sure to check out the entire collection of illustrations from this work in Flickr!

New and Improved Social Media Interactions

2011-09-07T13:03:00.013-04:00

If you're active in social media, chances are you've already discovered our presence on a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Flickr, SlideSh are and Twitter (for a list of all of our social media accounts, visit our public wiki). You can now also see linked icons to each of our social media platforms on the left-hand side of BHL’s home page.

We love the way social media has allowed us to connect and interact with users in a way we couldn't before, including sharing thousands of beautiful images with you, conducting daily trivia contests, and hearing from you about what you like about BHL and what you'd like to see improved or added to our site or collection. As great as this has been, we think we can do more. So, our technical development team has been busy providing you with even more ways to socially interact with BHL content.

Cue the social media icons. As we mentioned before, on the left-hand side of the BHL page, you now see icons for our social media outlets.

But you will also see Facebook "Like" and Twitter "Tweet" buttons.

What do these buttons do? They allow you to share aspects of BHL that you like with your friends and followers with a single click. If you're on the BHL homepage and you click the Facebook "Like" button, your profile will indicate that you "like" BHL. Similarly, if you click on the "Tweet" button, you can tweet the BHL link to your followers.

But perhaps this isn't enough. Say you want to "like" or share a specific title or volume with your friends and followers. All you have to do is find the title or volume that you want to “Like” or “Tweet” and click on the Facebook "Like" or Twitter "Tweet" button to send a title or volume-specific tweet or page post.

Do you want to tweet a specific page? You can! Just go to the page you want to share and click on the persistent link.

You will get a window like the one below with the page link already filled out for you. You can add or subtract any text and then hit the “Tweet” button.

Voila, you just “Tweeted” the page! It will look like the picture below.

What if you want to “Like” a specific page in Facebook? Easy! Again, just view the page you want to share, click on the persistent link, and then click the “Like” button and it will pop up in your Facebook feed and look a little something like this.

We think that's pretty cool, and we hope it will allow you to share your serendipitous moments of awesome biodiversity literature discovery with the world!

If you have any thoughts or comments about these developments, or other ideas that you'd like to see implemented, don't hesitate to send us some feedback or, better yet, tell us via Facebook or Twitter!

By Gilbert Borrego, BHL Library Technician

What's in a Logo? Or Rather, What's in Our Logo?

2011-09-06T09:46:00.007-04:00

If you've visited our site in the past few days, or follow our blog, you know that BHL now has a new and improved logo! We have our friends at BHL-Australia to thank for this exciting new development, as our logo is a modified version of their own eye-catching design. Before the BHL-Au logo designer, Simon O'Shea, left the BHL-Au project for a new assignment with Lonely Planet, he contributed his creative talent to adapt his original design for our use. He also provided style guidelines that can help extend the use of the logo globally. For access to files of our new logo, or the guidelines surrounding its use, visit out Logo page on our Public Wiki.

Adopting a single image to represent the entirety of what the BHL is and stands for is no simple task. Our new logo deliberately moves away from the literal double helix, vine and butterfly we once used to evoke a broader sense of what the BHL is about in the abstract. That being said, we found that many of our colleagues saw a variety of different things in the simple lines of our new logo. This made us think that it's time for a BHL inkblot test! We'll tell you what several members of our team have seen in the logo, and then you tell us what you see. And don't worry - we won't be psychologically analyzing you based on what you see. Well, not that much, anyway...;-)

Inkblot Test 1: The Book

We're starting off with the most obvious form: an open book with pages turning.

Inkblot Test 2: The Rabbit

Several of our colleagues thought that the logo looked like an open book with rabbit's ears peaking up over the top.

Inkblot Test 3: A Bird in Flight

For some of our Staff, the three overlapping symmetrical shapes in our logo looked like a motion-capture shot of a bird's wings in flight.

Inkblot Test 4: Sydney Opera House

Some have even seen shapes reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House in the branching curves of our logo.

Inkblot Test 5: The Cat

The arched shapes of the logo also bring to mind a cat's ears and whiskers for some staff members.

Inkblot Test 6: Leaves

Besides the "leaves" of a book, our new logo could also be construed as the leaves of a tree.

Now it's your turn! What do you see in the shapes of our logo? Tell us by leaving a comment on this post, sending us feedback, sending us a Tweet, or Posting on our Wall. If we get enough response, we'll do a follow-up post detailing the many other forms our users see in the blue depths of our logo.

Book of the Week: Mantell and the Dinosaurs

2011-09-02T07:20:00.002-04:00

We often take it for granted that humans have always known about the existence of the dinosaurs, and that there was never a dispute that they could be anything but the prehistoric giants that we now know them to be. However, this is not the case. As far back as the early 1800s, people had no idea that an entire era of awe-inspiring creatures had lived and died on their planet. Dinosaur fossils that were discovered were attributed to other things, such as the 1676 discovery of most probably a Megalosaurus thigh bone by English museum curator Robert Plot, who believed that thigh bone belonged to a giant man. The first true breakthrough for the dinosaurs, however, occurred in 1822 when Gideon Mantell and his wife discovered and identified the first fossil teeth, which belonged to the dinosaur Mantell named Iguanodon.

Gideon Mantell, thanks to this discovery and his tireless work in geology and paleontology, is now recognized as the man who started the scientific study of dinosaurs. Beginning life as a doctor, Mantell spent his free time collecting and studying fossils that he found in the marl pits of Hamsey. His hobby became more than a pastime when, in 1813, he began corresponding and sharing his fossil shell discoveries with acclaimed naturalist and illustrator, James Sowerby. In December of 1813, Mantell was elected as a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and in 1815, he published his first paper on the characteristics of fossils discovered in the Lewes area.

It was 1822, however, when the important discovery of the Iguanodon teeth occurred. Encouraged by the stunning success of his publications to date (including a book on the geology of Sussex, for which King George IV of England requested four copies), Mantell began showing other scientists and naturalists the fossil teeth he had found. Most believed they were simply fairly recent fish or mammal teeth, and Mantell was mocked for his assertions to the contrary. Even Georges Cuvier mis-identified the fossils, claiming that they were the teeth of a rhinoceros. Eventually, however, Mantell was vindicated, and the great human love affair with the dinosaurs began.

One of Mantell's many important works was A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains (1850), which consists of 74 hand-colored engraved plates selected from James Parkinson's Organic Remains of a Former World and Edmund Artis' Antediluvian Phytology. Mantell wrote the descriptions for the plates, which include illustrations of fossilized wood, plants and fruits, corals, shells, insects, turtles, sharks, elk, and many more. While you can see just four of the many lovely illustrations from our book of the week in this post, be sure to check out our Flickr site to see all of the illustrations!

Sadly, the later years of Mantell's life were not entirely happy. In 1833, when Mantell relocated to Brighton, his medical practice suffered, rendering him almost destitute. His house was turned into a museum in hopes of securing additional financial support, but Mantell's habit of waiving the entrance fee doomed the museum to failure. In 1841, Mantell suffered serious injuries as a result of a carriage accident which left him crippled and in constant pain. As might be expected from a true scientist, he continued his studies diligently despite the accident, publishing many more books and papers until his death in 1852 due to an overdose of Opium. His legacy, however, remains, and thanks to his tireless perseverance and refusal to accept the dismissive opinions of others, we can now stand in awe of the magnificent era of the dinosaurs.

This week's book of the week, A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains (1850), with descriptions by Gideon Mantell, was contributed by Harvard University, MCZ, Ernst Mayr Library.

New Features, New Logo

2011-09-01T11:05:00.000-04:00

BHL has made some big changes today. Our site now features a new logo, a new "Donate" button and enhanced social media functionality that significantly improves the way you can interact with and share BHL content.

New Opportunities to Support and Share

We know you love BHL, and from the plethora of feedback that we've received from users over the years, we know there are many of you that want to help support us. In light of this feedback, we've added new "Donate" functionality to the BHL. By clicking on the "Donate" button at the top of your screen, you have the opportunity to provide tax-deductible financial gifts to BHL that will help support continuing development and scanning. A very warm and heartfelt thanks goes out to our users in advance for checking out this new functionality and considering a gift of support.

You can also show your support of the BHL for free by liking us on Facebook or tweeting about us on Twitter! For some time now, we have been building a presence on a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter (for a list of all of our social media accounts, visit our public wiki). We've now added new linked icons to each of our social media platforms on the left-hand navigation bar of the BHL website.

We love the way social media has allowed us to connect and interact with users in ways we couldn't before, including sharing thousands of beautiful images with you, conducting daily trivia contests, and hearing from you about what you like about BHL and what you'd like to see improved or added to our site or collection. As great as this has been, we think we can do more. So, our technical development team has been busy providing you with even more ways to socially interact with BHL content.

With the new Facebook "like" button and the Twitter "tweet" buttons:

you now have the opportunity to "like" or "tweet" about specific titles, volumes, or pages you find in our collection. Go to your favorite title in the BHL and try clicking on one of the buttons shown above. You'll have a new quick and easy way to share about BHL content via your preferred social media platform. More detailed information about our new social media features is forthcoming in a future blog post. Stay tuned.

The New Face of BHL

The new features we've added to our website do more to allow our users to interact directly with and support the BHL project. To highlight these changes we've adopted a new logo. Working together with our BHL-Australia colleagues, we decided to let go of our old image and adopt a sleeker, more compact one. With this new logo we are putting a fresh "face" forward to welcome the future of exciting new developments for the BHL. Expect more information on our new logo, its origins, and the process we went through to create it, in a later blog post.

As always, we want to hear from you!

If you have any thoughts or comments about today's changes, or other ideas that you'd like to see implemented, don't hesitate to send us some feedback or, better yet, tell us via Facebook or Twitter. Thank you for all your interest and support of the BHL. With your help, we will continue to grow and improve for the long road ahead.

-Bianca Crowley, BHL Collections Coordinator

BHL and Our Users: EOL Rubenstein Fellow, Dr. Joaquin (Ximo) Mengual

2011-08-30T09:17:00.002-04:00

Welcome to the second installment of our mini-series featuring EOL Rubenstein Fellows and their use of BHL. This week, we feature Dr. Joaquin (Ximo) Mengual, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to studying Syrphidae!

What are your research interests, where do you do the bulk of your work (country), and what is your institution of affiliation?

My research interests focus on systematics and phylogenetics of the family Syrphidae (Insecta, Diptera), also known as flower flies or hoverflies. I am currently in the USA. I’m a Postdoctoral fellow at the Entomology Department of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

In the program, Fellowships are expected to serve as a complimentary funding source to existing funding you have that supports your primary research activities. Please describe what your primary research activities are.

My primary research focuses on the taxonomy of Neotropical and Oriental syrphid genera, with a special interest in cybertaxonomy and the phylogenetic relationships among genera of the subfamily Syrphinae (http://entomology.si.edu/StaffPages/MengualJ.html).

Please describe how you use EOL to disseminate or support your primary research activities, or what your primary duties related to EOL are.

When describing new species in my publications, I always have to mention the differences between new and already described ones. I traditionally use illustrations for the new species but I also like to e-link images and texts already in EOL for those species that were previously described. As an EOL fellow (Rubenstein fellow), my primary duties are to create authoritative pages for all the distinct species groups of flower flies, using images, texts, descriptions, synonyms and references. To achieve this, I have a LifeDesk for flower flies. Everything in this LifeDesk also goes to EOL as a contribution.

How has the EOL Fellows program made a difference in your career/research?

The EOL Fellows program has given me the opportunity to study in detail all the different genera, subgenera and species groups of the family Syrphidae; it has helped me to have a more global vision of this group and to become familiar with a lot of literature that was previously unknown to me. Lastly, the EOL Fellows program has improved my skills to disseminate information and to work on cybertaxonomy.

Who is your Mentor, what is their area of interest (research activities), and how have they supported you throughout your Fellowship?

My Mentor is Dr. F. Christian Thompson. His interests include flower flies and others, their diversity, and cybertaxonomy. Dr. Thompson helped me conceive the design of the project, when it became necessary to find a way to manage a large amount of data by creating a database of the specimens photographed for EOL pages; he also gave me very wise advice about the systematics of Syrphidae. Last, but not least, he contributed with some texts to the LifeDesk and has kindly reviewed my contributions.

How does BHL support your Fellows activities, as well as those research activities that fall outside of your duties as an EOL Fellow?

For all the bibliographic references I have in the LifeDesk, I look for the original publication in BHL to link the species page with the publication. BHL has become an essential part of my daily life and has helped me in finding references, basic not only to my EOL duties, but also to my articles and publications. Very often I have to read old descriptions and texts from rare books, and BHL provides them in electronic format, making my life much easier because I don’t need to carry tons of books with me in order to conduct my research.

When did you first discover BHL?

It was in 2009, when I moved from Spain to Washington, DC, to start my postdoctoral fellowship. Dr. Thompson was the first to introduce me to this project when I needed to consult a publication from 1822 called Systematische Beschreibung der bekannten europaischen zweiflugeligen Insekten, by J. W. Meigen.

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

As I said, the most important service on BHL is the capability of downloading books and other texts in electronic format. When I’m travelling or visiting museums abroad and I need to check some literature to finish a manuscript, or to check some characters from a described species to identify a specimen, BHL and its electronic texts have an incalculable value for me because I don’t have to carry heavy books and I don’t have to worry if there is not a copy of that rare book in the institution I’m visiting. The fact that you can search by author, by journal or by scientific name is also of great help because sometimes you don’t have the full name of the journal or there is some misspelling in the book’s name.

If you could change one thing about BHL, or suggest one thing to be the next developmental priority for BHL, what would it be?

I would like to be able to search for each article inside a journal. Right now you can only search for the journal and the issue inside the journal. Sometimes, if somebody has tagged an article, you can find it but those are very rare occasions. Normally you have to download the whole issue and then search for your particular article. If the users were able to query BHL with using the article’s title and the article’s author, it would save a lot of time.

Please describe why you think services like EOL and BHL are important for today’s scientific community.

In a digital era, it is essential to have a digital database of our knowledge on natural history. In my opinion BHL changed the way scientists do science, as heavy books are not necessary anymore if they are scanned and their texts and images are available in electronic format. BHL gave us the opportunity to read old literature and do science anywhere, not only in libraries or in your office.

On the other hand, EOL changed the way scientists communicate with the general public and vice versa. Before EOL, citizen-scientists needed to read original publications in journals that most probably were not available to them, and access to museum’s collections were restricted. EOL gave the opportunity to taxonomists, citizen-scientists and public in general, to see images of type material, photographs of animals, fungi and plants in their habitats properly identified, so they can use them to identify and name the nature that surrounds them. It is not only the texts and images, but also the links to important bibliographic references (here it is where BHL comes into play), the security of authoritative species pages and identifications and the possibility to search a particular species within the vast number of described taxa.

Do you have a favorite book in BHL, or a book that has most supported your research activities or EOL responsibilities?

I do not because I find all of them important. If I had to choose one, I would choose one book by the “starters” such as Linnaeus, Fabricius, Scopoli, Fallen, Wiedemann; the feeling of reading a 250 year old book in your computer is beyond words.

Thank you, Dr. Mengual, for taking the time to share your work with us and discuss the importance of both BHL and EOL to your research! We are quite aware of our users' desire to access items at the article-level in BHL, and with that in mind, we are in the process of developing Citebank, which will serve as an article repository for BHL, allowing users to access not only journal-level items from BHL, but also articles. While it is still in beta, we invite our users to explore this service and provide us feedback about it! And don't forget to visit Dr. Mengual's LifeDesk to learn everything you want to know about Syrphidae!