All posts from July 2025

Since the release of our official Call for Support on 11 June 2025, the global response has been inspiring and heartwarming. We’re charting the course to a strong and sustainable future for the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Behind the scenes, many exciting conversations are underway, including offers of technical hosting, funding support, and staffing partnerships. As we transition from Smithsonian hosting, we’re seeking ambitious ideas for BHL’s future. 

In the past several weeks, we’ve seen a large, disruptive increase in traffic to the BHL main website. This blog post is meant to summarize the event, the effect on BHL and its servers, our response, and what we have planned should it happen again.

The problems experienced on BHL’s website are not related in any way to the transition away from the Smithsonian. We believe the timing of this activity and the resulting downtime to be purely coincidental.