The BHL Collections Committee has completed a comprehensive review and revision of BHL’s collection development policy. The new policy is written to provide recommendations and serve the collection management needs of BHL Partners. As a key objective of BHL’s Strategic Plan 2020-2025, the new policy is a significant revision to the original policy written in 2010. In learning together as a collaborative community of practice since then, our understanding of BHL collection management has been expanded and refined to:
- clarify collection management priorities;
- articulate our responsibility to pursue more diverse perspectives;
- outline BHL Partner expectations;
- better define our scope;
- describe BHL-specific curation best practices; and
- provide transparency by posting the complete policy via BHL’s About Site.
Going forward, the collection development policy will be reviewed on a yearly basis for minor updates.
A snapshot of BHL relevant subject keywords as derived from its collection. September 2022
With over 40 BHL Partners across the globe, the Biodiversity Heritage Library collection is the one place where these disparate materials can come together. BHL’s shared vision, to inspire discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge, is the basis upon which staff at partner institutions contribute their time and expertise to crafting policies and best practices such as BHL’s collection development policy. It is with special thanks to the BHL Collections Committee, our Partners, and especially the late Connie Rinaldo, that we are proud to announce its release.
Bianca Crowley is the Digital Collections Manager for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, headquartered at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. She has spent her career in this role helping consortium Partners grow and curate BHL's collection. Her main responsibilities revolve around program administration and collection management, but you can also find her tackling technical development, documentation, copyright, and cataloging issues as time allows. She received her MSLIS from The Catholic University of America.
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