Color Our Collections

Get your colored pencils ready!

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Join us for the Color Our Collections event this week, February 1-5, 2016. Led by The New York Academy of Medicine, the event invites you to download images from library and cultural institution collections, color them, and share them on social media using the event hashtag #ColorOurCollections. With millions of natural history illustrations produced over 500 years in our collection, BHL is thrilled to participate in the event.

 
How to Download Images from BHL for Color Our Collections
 
BHL Flickr

We’ve gathered over 1,000 black and white images from books in the BHL collection into a new Flickr collection. Browse the images, download your favorites, and color away! https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/72157663149641612/

BHL Pinterest

While BHL is full of beautiful black and white images that are just waiting to be colored, there are also thousands of stunning color illustrations in our library that are great candidates for a coloring book. We’ve selected some of our favorites and turned them into coloring pages. They’re available for you to browse, download, and color in Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/biodivlibrary/bhl-coloring-pages/

To download one of the images in Pinterest, right click on the pin and choose “save image as” to save the image to your computer. You can then print and color at your leisure!

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BHL Coloring Book

Want to download all of the coloring pages in the BHL Pinterest at once? We’ve prepared a handy PDF, which you can download for free here: 2016 BHL Coloring Book

Source Books in BHL
 

You can browse the books that the images in our Color Our Collections Flickr and Pinterest sets come from in our BHL Collection here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/ColorOurCollections

Many other institutions will also be participating in the event and sharing images from their own collections for you to download and color. Check out this list to see who else is involved. Be sure to follow the hashtag #ColorOurCollections on social media to learn more, and don’t forget to share your masterpieces with that same hashtag (and tag @BioDivLibrary if it’s from a BHL image). We look forward to seeing your works of art!

Avatar for Grace Costantino
Written by

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.