Happy Birthday BHL!

Like proud parents, we’re excited to announce that today BHL turns 5 years old! In 2007, the Biodiversity Heritage Library portal was launched with 306 titles, 3,236 volumes, and 1,271,664 pages of taxonomic literature, presented via a simple portal bathed in earthy tones. What began as a consortium of just 10 natural history and botanical libraries has today grown into a global project, with 14 US/UK consortium members as well as BHL nodes on every continent in the world except Antarctica.

Today, BHL includes:

These are just a few of the improvements we’ve made to BHL since it was born in 2007. Take a look at what BHL used to look like through the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made and look forward to the next five years. We’re expecting big things!
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Grace Costantino served as the Outreach and Communication Manager for the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 2014 to 2021. In this capacity, she developed and managed BHL's communication strategy, oversaw social media initiatives, and engaged with the public to excite audiences about the wealth of biodiversity heritage available in BHL. Prior to her role as Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace served as the Digital Collections Librarian for Smithsonian Libraries and as the Program Manager for BHL.