Études de fleurs et de fruits: peints d’après nature by Henriette Vincent is a book of beautiful botanical illustrations.  With 48 color plates of stipple engravings of flowers and fruits, this work was first published in Paris, France in 1820. This is a scarce volume with only a few copies known to exist in libraries.

Tulip = Tulipe. Vincent, Henriette. Études de fleurs et de fruits: peints d’après nature. 1820. Digitized by the Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48344872.

In his Flower and fruit prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries, Gordon Dunthorne calls this book “…among the most exquisite of all flower prints in their beauty and delicacy of execution.”

Among the fruit depicted are plums, currants, cherries, apricots, grapes, apples, pears, peaches, raspberries, and strawberries. The flower assortment includes tulip, daffodil, jasmine, pansy, lilac, hyacinth, iris, nasturtium, and roses in white, red, and pink varieties.

Lily = Lis du Japon. Vincent, Henriette. Études de fleurs et de fruits: peints d’après nature. 1820. Digitized by the Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48344832.

Within these vibrant colored plates, Madame Vincent incorporates imperfections on the fruit, leaves and stems and adds moths, ladybug, and dew drops. True to size, shape, and color, when I look at her work, I feel as though I’m seeing her plant sample in its true form.

Plum = Prune de Monsieur. Vincent, Henriette. Études de fleurs et de fruits: peints d’après nature. 1820. Digitized by the Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48344874.

As was proper etiquette for women at this time, what you don’t see are roots, seeds, and reproductive plant parts, which would be included in scientific works of this era.

Henriette Antoinette Vincent (1786-1830). Image used with permission from her descendent.

Madame Vincent was a student of renowned botanical artists Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Gerard van Spaendonck and truly learned her craft from the masters. She had the opportunity to exhibit her work in the Paris Salon about the time this volume was published.

The plates are signed “Peint par Mme. Vincent, gravé par Lambert aîné,” which translates to “Painted by Mrs. Vincent, engraved by Lambert elder.”

Explore this magnificent work in BHL, digitized from the collections of the Chicago Botanic Garden Lenhardt Library, and explore all of the illustrations in Flickr.

Currant = Groseilles. Vincent, Henriette. Études de fleurs et de fruits: peints d’après nature. 1820. Digitized by the Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48344870.

2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. We’re kicking off our year-long celebrations with our #BHLat10 campaign this week, 11-15 April 2016. The campaign celebrates BHL’s impact on the global science community, our history and growth, and our collections. Content is being published on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, and BHL. Learn more: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/BHLat10

One of our objectives for the #BHLat10 campaign is to celebrate our collections around our 10th anniversary themes and highlight contributions from our Members and Affiliates. So, we pulled together some “Top 10” lists as well as collections of “top” content from our Members and Affiliates. Explore some highlights below and check out our website for the full content.

The most-viewed book in BHL. Linné, Carl von. Caroli Linnaei…Systema naturae per regna trip naturae. v. 1 (1758). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/10277. Digitized by the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Top 10 Viewed Books in BHL

• Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, v. 1
• Annales de l’Institut océanographique, v. 6
• Dictionnaire d’histoire naturelle, qui concerne les testacées ou les coquillages de mer, de terre & d’eau-douce, t. 2
• Latreille’s Naturliche Familien des Thierreichs
• Taxonomic literature, v. 1
• Caroli Linnaei … Species plantarum, v. 1
• Das Pflanzenreich :regni vegetablilis conspectus, heft 1
• Nomenclator botanicus, seu, Synonymia plantarum universalis
• Caroli Linnaei … Species plantarum, v. 2
• Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), v. 5

The most-downloaded book in BHL. Bergey, D. H. (David Hendricks). Bergey’s manual of determinative bacteriology. (1957). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/41848. Digitized by the MBLWHOI Library.

Top 10 Downloaded Books in BHL

• Bergey’s manual of determinative bacteriology
• America : being the latest, and most accurate description of the New World
• Insects, their ways and means of living
• On growth and form
• Fish hatchery management
• Plant names, scientific and popular, including in the case of each plant the correct botanical name in accordance with the reformed nomenclature, together with botanical and popular synonyms
• Poultry diseases, causes, symptoms and treatment, with notes on post-mortem examinations
• A text-book of entomology, including the anatomy, physiology, embryology and metamorphoses of insects, for use in agricultural and technical schools and colleges as well as by the working entomologist
• Birds in legend, fable and folklore
• The art of scientific investigation

Member and Affiliate Contribution Highlights

• View the top downloaded book from each of our Members and Affiliates
• Explore our Member and Affiliates’ most viewed albums in Flickr in our BHL at 10 Image Collection (slideshow of the images from these albums below)
• View selections from our Members and Affiliates’ top-viewed Flickr albums in Pinterest

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We hope you’ll join us in celebrating our 10th anniversary this week and all year long! Follow #BHLat10 on social media to catch all of our great content and tell us how BHL has impacted your work by posting with the hashtag or leaving a comment on this blog.

To help ensure that BHL continues to provide free and open access to biodiversity literature for decades to come, we’ve launched a CafePress store with products celebrating our 10th anniversary and featuring images from our collection. We’ve launched the store with a small selection of images from BHL, but we’ll be expanding this selection in the future as we continue to develop our store. 100% of the proceeds that BHL receives from the sale of these products will be used to digitize more books for BHL. Check out the store today!

And if merchandise isn’t your thing, but you want to help support BHL’s future, consider making a tax-deductible gift to help us continue to support science and research around the world.

Finally, don’t forget to sign our birthday card and tell us what BHL means to you!

Happy Birthday, BHL!

2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. We’re kicking off our year-long celebrations with our #BHLat10 campaign this week, 11-15 April 2016. The campaign celebrates BHL’s impact on the global science community, our history and growth, and our collections. Content is being published on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, and BHL. Learn more: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/BHLat10

We also have programming all week tying into our #BHLat10 themes. Learn more.

One of the themes of our #BHLat10 campaign is to celebrate our history. To do so, we’ve created a timeline highlighting some of our major milestones and provided an in-depth narrative of our history on our website.

(Click to Enlarge)
BHL officially launched in 2006 during the program’s first organizational meeting at the Smithsonian Libraries. The meeting, and hence BHL, grew out of discussions that occurred a year earlier during the 2005 meeting “Library and Laboratory: The Marriage of Research, Data, and Taxonomic Literature” at the Natural History Museum in London.

At the time of its formation, BHL included ten member organizations in the U.S. and the U.K. Tom Garnett, then Associate Director of Smithsonian Libraries, was named Program Director of BHL in 2007. The Smithsonian also assumed administrative responsibility for the program, establishing the BHL Secretariat. The Missouri Botanical Garden took on the program’s technical operations under Chris Freeland’s guidance as BHL’s Technical Director. Martin R. Kalfatovic, Associate Director of Digital Programs and Initiatives at Smithsonian Libraries and BHL’s current Program Director, took on the BHL directorial role after Garnett’s retirement in 2012. William Ulate served as Technical Director from 2012-2015, following Freeland’s departure from the Missouri Botanical Garden. Today, BHL’s technical development is led by a team of Technical Advisors comprised of staff from BHL’s Member institutions under the direction of Kalfatovic.

In 2007, the BHL website launched with just over 300 titles, largely comprised of collections already digitized by BHL’s Members. Over the ten years since its formation, BHL’s collections have grown to over 48 million pages, constituting over 175,000 volumes and over 106,000 titles. The consortium has also grown from 10 founding institutions to over 60 Member, Affiliate, and Partner institutions on every continent except Antarctica. Since its launch, BHL has served over 4.9 million people in 240 countries and territories. On average, BHL receives more than 161,000 visits per month, constituting over 9.4 million visits over the library’s lifetime. Additionally, BHL has made over 100,000 of the illustrations within its collection available in Flickr, which in turn have been viewed over 161 million times.

Over the past ten years, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has become the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature. It now serves as a standard for taxonomic literature aggregation, discovery and presentation as well as a model for other digital library initiatives. By engaging with the scientific community to identify user needs, incorporating tools that facilitate data discovery and reuse, and continuing to grow collections under open access principles by fostering existing and establishing new partnerships with libraries and data providers around the world, BHL has become an unparalleled resource that is transforming the way scientists, researchers, and the public understand and study the natural world.

Learn more about our history on our website.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating our 10th anniversary this week and all year long! Follow #BHLat10 to catch all of our great content and tell us how BHL has impacted your work by posting with the hashtag or leaving a comment on this blog.

To help ensure that BHL continues to provide free and open access to biodiversity literature for decades to come, we’ve launched a CafePress store with products celebrating our 10th anniversary and featuring images from our collection. We’ve launched the store with a small selection of images from BHL, but we’ll be expanding this selection in the future as we continue to develop our store. 100% of the proceeds that BHL receives from the sale of these products will be used to digitize more books for BHL. Check out the store today!

And if merchandise isn’t your thing, but you want to help support BHL’s future, consider making a tax-deductible gift to help us continue to support science and research around the world.

Finally, don’t forget to sign our birthday card and tell us what BHL means to you!

Happy Birthday, BHL!

We live in the midst of a major extinction crisis and widespread climate change. Documenting Earth’s species and understanding the complexities of swiftly-changing ecosystems is more important than ever before. To do this, scientists need something that no single library can provide – access to the world’s collective knowledge about biodiversity.

Fortunately, the Biodiversity Heritage Library is revolutionizing scientific research by providing free and open access to the collections of natural history and botanical libraries around the world. Since it was founded in 2006, BHL has become the largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature, allowing everyone, everywhere to freely access collections from across global and providing scientists with the information they need to study and save biodiversity. Learn more about how BHL helps save biodiversity and read testimonials from real users about BHL’s impact on global science.

The existence of BHL depends on support from our users. As part of our 10th anniversary celebration, we’ve launched a CafePress store with products featuring our #BHLat10 theme and images from our collection. We’re launching the store with a small selection of images from BHL, but we’ll be expanding this selection in the future as we continue to develop our store. 100% of the proceeds that BHL receives from the sale of these products will be used to digitize more books for BHL. Start shopping today and help give scientists around the world the resources they need to study and save biodiversity.

And if merchandise isn’t your thing, but you want to help support BHL’s future, consider making a tax-deductible gift to help us continue to support science and research around the world.

Follow #BHLat10 all this week (11-15 April 2016) to join our 10th anniversary celebrations.  The campaign celebrates BHL’s impact on the global science community, our history and growth, and our collections. Content is being published on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, and BHL. Learn more: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/BHLat10

We also have programming all week tying into our #BHLat10 themes. Learn more.

Finally, don’t forget to sign our birthday card and tell us what BHL means to you!

BHL Day at the Natural History Museum, London

A programme highlighting BHL’s impact on the global science community and featuring speakers from biodiversity-related disciplines.
When? 8am-1pm EDT/1-6pm BST, 12 April 2016
Where? Follow #BHLDay on Twitter to join the live tweeting of this event.

Let’s Talk Impact: An Interview with Rod Page at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Join us for a live interview at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with Martin R. Kalfatovic (@UDCMRK), BHL Program Director, and Rod Page (@rdmpage), creator of BioStor (@biostor_org), for a discussion about BHL’s impact on science and possibilities for the future.
When? 11am EDT/4pm BST, 13 April 2016
Where? Google Hangouts: http://bit.do/BHLLetsTalkImpact

Behind the Scenes at Tring

BHL’s partner libraries are full of amazing treasures. Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at selections from the Ornithology and Rothschild Libraries’ incredible collections at the Natural History Museum at Tring.
When? 6am EDT/11am BST, 15 April 2016
Where? www.periscope.tv/biodivlibrary

It’s a great week to celebrate our 10th anniversary because it’s also the American Library Association’s National Library Week. This year’s NLW theme is #LibrariesTransform. BHL has been transforming scientific research for 10 years, helping scientists identify, describe, and save Earth’s biodiversity. Explore interviews with actual users to see how BHL supports science and education (and even humanities research in history and art!). Visit our website to learn more about the tools, services, and citizen science initiatives that BHL provides and supports to help further transform biodiversity research around the world.

To help ensure that BHL continues to transform biodiversity research for decades to come, we’ve launched a CafePress store with products celebrating our 10th anniversary and featuring images from our collection. We’ve launched the store with a small selection of images from BHL, but we’ll be expanding this selection in the future as we continue to develop our store. 100% of the proceeds that BHL receives from the sale of these products will be used to digitize more books for BHL. Check out the store today!

And if merchandise isn’t your thing, but you want to help support BHL’s future, consider making a tax-deductible gift to help us continue to support science and research around the world.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating our 10th anniversary this week and all year long! Follow #BHLat10 on social media to catch all of our great content and tell us how BHL has impacted your work by posting with the hashtag or leaving a comment on this blog. And don’t forget to sign our birthday card and tell us what BHL means to you!

Happy Birthday, BHL!