All posts from February 2019

As a new Master of Library and Information Studies graduate, I was looking for opportunities to gain more library experience, especially with regard to cataloguing and metadata. An internet search led me to the many intern opportunities available at Smithsonian Libraries. The Digital Content Intern position at the Biodiversity Heritage Library was a perfect fit for me. It was a virtual position, allowing me the flexibility to stay in Toronto, Canada and maintain a full-time job at a hospital. I completed my entire master’s through an online program from a Canadian university while living in Melbourne, Australia, so I was familiar working at a distance, independently, and using digital mediums to learn and connect with others.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library’s loss is the gain of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. Carolyn Sheffield, BHL Program Manager, will be taking on a newly developed position as Associate Director, Library Technology and Digital Strategies effective March 4, 2019.

When Galen Clark’s The Big Trees of California, their History and Characteristics, was published, in 1907, he was 93 years old. It had been 50 years since he first came to live in the Mariposa Grove in Yosemite Valley. He had spent most of those years in the midst of the giant sequoias, serving as a guide and educator, and fighting for the protection of these natural wonders.

The noted naturalist and conservationist John Muir met Galen Clark on his first visit to Yosemite, and later, in his writing on The Yosemite, called him “the best mountaineer I ever met, and one or the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.” Along with Muir, Clark was instrumental in Yosemite’s preservation and development as a national park.

Like many taxonomists, I like to group things together and sort them: specimens into species, species into genera, references into bibliographies, images into galleries. The Biodiversity Heritage Library has been a powerful enabler for me as a grouper-sorter.

Fifteen or so years ago, a literature search still required at least one long and expensive trip from my home town in regional Tasmania to an academic library in Hobart (Tasmania’s capital city), or in Melbourne or Canberra on the Australian mainland. Reams of paper were used to make photocopies of key references that I could take home with me. Weeks were spent waiting for additional photocopies to arrive through inter-library loans. When I finally had all the relevant older references, I could do my revisionary taxonomic work.

Then BHL appeared.

For the past 10 years, almost all the older literature I need to see has been accessed through BHL — quickly, cheaply and paperlessly.

This Women’s History Month, we invite you to join us in celebrating women in natural history as part of an international social media campaign produced in collaboration with our partners — Her Natural History: A Celebration of Women in Natural History.

Through social media and blog posts, interactive programming and citizen science opportunities, Her Natural History aims to increase awareness of and information about women in the biodiversity sciences.

The campaign will kick-off with an all-day social media blitz on Friday, 8 March 2019 (International Women’s Day) and continue throughout the month with additional posts and programming, including a Wikipedia Editing Workshop on 13 March. #HerNaturalHistory is also the @iglibraries #LibrariesOfInstagram challenge topic for March.

Vanity, an art installation by Joseph Gregory Rossano created for and with the support of the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington, tells the story of eleven species and subspecies, presumed extinct, presented through the lens of humanity’s role in their demise. The exhibition features historical accounts detailing each species’ “discovery” (collection date, type locality, collector, scientific illustrations, etc.), humanity’s role in its extinction, and the year it was declared “Extinct”. To produce these species tales, Rossano collaborated with Sandra I. Berríos-Torres, MD. Berríos-Torres served as author of the 11 historical accounts and as Editorial Director of the exhibition catalogue, on behalf of Joseph Gregory Rossano.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library was a crucial resource for Berríos-Torres. Consulting dozens of publications in BHL while conducting research for Vanity, she ultimately cited 16 of them in the historical accounts that were incorporated into the exhibition and catalogue.

Help us enhance information in Wikipedia about women in natural history during our Wikipedia Editing Workshop on 13 March in celebration of Women’s History Month!

In collaboration with Smithsonian Libraries and with support from Wikimedia DC, we’ll be hosting a Wikipedia Editing Workshop from 10am-2pm ET on 13 March to improve and create Wikipedia articles related to women in natural history. The workshop will be hosted by the Smithsonian Libraries in the National Museum of Natural History Library. There will also be virtual participation options. Registration is required.