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Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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    Page Frights
    Her Natural History
    Earth Optimism 2020
Tech Blog
Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts from June 2013

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Death by Corset: A Nineteenth-Century Book about Fatal Women’s Fashions (and Animal Physiology)

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If you go by what J. L. Comstock, M.D., had to say in 1848 about what it was like to be a lady, times were difficult. In this week’s book of the week, Outlines of Physiology, both Comparative and Human; in which are Described the Mechanical, Animal, Vital, and Sensorial Organs and Functions; Also, The Application of These Principles to Muscular Exercise, and Female Fashions and Deformities, Comstock explains that young women were under enormous pressure to be aesthetically pleasing to men (not a bad goal, he points out), and this pressure to look good by wearing a corset or stays was causing rampant deformities, illness, and even death: “. . .I have no doubt that the ladies themselves, to a considerable extent, will agree with me in believing, that hundreds, nay thousands, of females literally kill themselves every year by this fashion in our own country: and if suicide is a crime, how will such escape in the day of final account!” (311).

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June 27, 2013byLaurel Byrnes
Blog Reel, User Stories

Botanical Research in the Asian Tropics

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Nestled within the Hang Dong district, Chiang Mai, Thailand, is a 10 acre botanical garden called Dokmai Garden. Run by the Thai family Seehamongkol, it boasts over 1,000 plant species, including orchids, laurels, banana plants, birds-of-paradise plants, and gingers. The Seehamongkol family, and the garden’s biologist and Director, Dr. Eric Danell, have the lucky fortune of not only working in this garden, but also of calling it home.

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June 25, 2013byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

A Bookplate for the Birds

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Swann, H. Kirke, 1871-1926. A Synopsis of the Accipitres (Diurnal Birds of Prey), Comprising Species and Subspecies Described up to 1920, with their Characters and Distribution. 2nd edition, revised and corrected throughout. London: Privately Printed for the Author, 1921-1922. 
This post originally published on the Smithsonian Collections blog, April 16, 2013. 
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June 20, 2013byDiane Shaw
BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL Program Director accepts Computerworld laureate award

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As noted in our blog post from March 22, 2013, BHL was named a 2013 Computerworld Honors Program Laureate.On June 3rd, BHL Chair Nancy Gwinn and I accepted the award on behalf of BHL and BHL staff at the Computerworld Honors Laureate Ceremony and Awards gala held in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC.In addition to the presentation of the laureate medals, the event was keynoted by Vinton Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, and, truly, one of the “creators of the Internet.”

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June 18, 2013byMartin R. Kalfatovic
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Celebrating Humankind’s Best Friend, the Dog!

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As a bone-a-fide dog lover, it gives me great pleasure to highlight Baynes and Louis Agassiz Fuertes’ beautifully illustrated “The Book of Dogs: an intimate study of mankind’s best friend” as this week’s book of the week.

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June 14, 2013byBianca Crowley
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Wait, is that the original?

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Recently, the librarians at the Smithsonian Libraries’ Botany-Horticulture Library uncovered a “mini-mystery” involving one of our titles. It started when the botanical illustrator in the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany got a call from a colleague asking why a work in BHL was appearing with black and white illustrations rather than the beautiful color originals.

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June 11, 2013byAdriana Marroquin and Robin Everly
BHL News, Blog Reel

Recap of the 3rd International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives and BHL participation.

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We had a very good 3rd ICADLA meeting in Ifrane, Morocco. As part of the Advisory Committee, I was very pleased with the over all program (though disappointed that there was so much confusion in having a representative from the Google Cultural Institute and then the person ended up not attending).The opening keynote, by Misako Ito (UNESCO Office for Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia) provided a good kick off to the meeting.

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June 10, 2013byMartin R. Kalfatovic
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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