Happy Birthday, BHL! Three years ago this month, the Biodiversity Heritage Library began scanning books aimed at increasing access to the world’s vast array of biodiversity literature. While the word “dent” may be too strong to describe our goal of 100% completion of the universe of biodiversity literature, as you can see below, steady growth continues. Back in 2007, while busy working on the repository’s basic architecture, we had 228 items scanned. Roughly 12 and two thirds Traditional Library Shelves. Today’s numbers are a bit more impressive: 2,318 shelves worth of scanned material! Luckily, we don’t really need to find space to store each item as scanning marches ever forward!
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That’s binary for Happy Birthday BHL!
Erin Thomas served as a Digital Collections Librarian at Smithsonian Libraries from 2009-2014.
Advanced Happy Birthday, BHL! You'll be celebrating your 4th come May. Organizations like BHL keep literary pieces alive and part of every individual's system (even those who deny passion for reading). Keep the good works coming, BHL.