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| Sneak Peek! The soon-to-be-released BHL homepage! |
The BHL team has been hard at work for the past year developing a new user interface (which will become live on March 18, 2013!) based on usability studies and the design and functionality of the BHL-Australia portal. BHL-Australia staff* partnered with BHL-US/UK staff to merge the user-praised aesthetics and book viewer of the Au portal with the functionality of the US/UK portal.
Besides a whole new look and feel, users will be able to navigate more easily within books, with the ability to view multiple columns of pages on screen at once, scroll quickly to a specific page within the book, and view the book’s OCR text alongside page images.
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| The new book viewer, which will include options to view multiple columns of pages on the screen at once and view OCR text alongside page images! |
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.
We're so glad you like our library! The issue you describe was definitely a server issue. I took a quick look at the volumes available for this title and didn't see any issues at present: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/54764. If you do still notice an issue though, please don't hesitate to respond to this comment or send us feedback to feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org. Please include the URL to the specific item that is problematic, as these server issues are item-based, not system-wide. Thanks again for your praise for our project, and we hope you continue to find the resources you need!
The only book I've looked at so far has some black pages–well parts of a few pages are black–not the entire page. Seemed odd. Anyway, the book is called Cyclopedia of American Horticulture.
Thank you for your wonderful assistance. Your library is terrific!!
Dear Anonymous,
All books in BHL are all free to view and download online. You should be able to see all pages in any book without issue. You do not need to sign up for anything to view any of our pages.
It's possible that there were some server issues when you tried to access a certain page in BHL, or there may be a problem with a particular file. If you let us know which books you're having trouble with, we can look into it.
Some files on BHL are also very large, and if you do not have a strong Internet connection, or if you are using a shared connection, like at an institution, where there are a lot of other demands on the connection, page loading may timeout. If this is the issue, we suggest you try viewing the items on a different computer or during less heavy Internet traffic times at your institution.
We are eager to help you resolve any issues you have with viewing items in our collection. You can either respond to this comment or send us an email with detailed information to feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org.
The new BHL interface, which was detailed in this blog post, will be available on March 18, 2013!
Best,
The BHL Team
I'm confused. Why are some pages in a book totally black but I can see others? Do you have to join to see all the pages?? Are these books all to view for free online or what? Thank you for explaining.