BHL Servers are Moving!

The big day is here! BHL’s Tech Team is starting the three-week process of moving BHL’s technical infrastructure from the Smithsonian data center just outside of Washington, DC, to the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.

First, though, we are deeply grateful to the Field Museum for welcoming BHL’s technology and helping ensure that biodiversity knowledge remains available to the global community. The support from their administration and technical team is invaluable.

We’ve been testing and configuring the network at the Field Museum and BHL is already quietly running on their network, so we are confident the process will go smoothly when we ship and install the production database and full-text-search servers.

“How will this affect BHL?”, you say. Great question! As much as possible, the BHL website will remain online and we do not expect any time where BHL is unavailable. The shipments to Chicago will take place in two parts to ensure BHL is always available, with some limitations. The first shipment on 11 June 2026 will have no impact on the regular functions of the site.

The second shipment on 25 June 2026 will cause the usual full-text search function to be temporarily unavailable while the full-text-search server is in transit. This means users will still be able to search titles, authors, subjects, and other catalog metadata, but users will not be able to search the full text of books and articles. This will last for 5-6 days over a weekend.

The 11th of June is a warm up, but the big day is the 25th of June when we officially begin serving BHL from the Field Museum.

We’ve set up an informational page with more details and will update it as things progress. We’ve also provided a map to illustrate where BHL’s servers are during transit.

A map of the route the servers will take to get to Chicago.
Please note that the path is neither accurate nor to scale. (Map Source)

But will the BHL servers feel at home in Chicago? To help them acclimate, we looked to historical maps of rainfall, soils, and vegetation to compare BHL’s former and future environments.

From: Atlas of American agriculture, no.5 (Source)

In Chicago, BHL will be receiving slightly less rainfall (30-35 ” or 75-88 cm per year) than on the U.S. East Coast (35-40″ or 85-100 cm). This, however, is mitigated by its proximity to Lake Michigan, which is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world.

This looks like sufficient water for BHL, but these are historical values and may not reflect the effect of global climate change. In fact, it’s reported that the north-central part of the United States is in a moderate drought.

From: Atlas of American agriculture, no.8 (Source)

What about soil type? BHL is leaving an area of Gray-Brown Podzolic soils to the much less prodigious Soils of the Northern Prairie. Looking closely at this map, we can see that BHL’s familiar soils are in close proximity to its new soil environment in Chicago, so we hope that this will help BHL rapidly make the transition to its new home.

From: Atlas of American agriculture, no.6 (Source)

Lastly, we look at vegetation. Historically the eastern seaboard of the United States is abundant in Oak-Pine and Chestnut-Oak-Yellow Poplar forests. The move to Chicago brings a potentially dramatic change as BHL moves from forests to the Tall Grasses of the Prairie Grasslands. Much like the new soil type, we see that BHL is still in close proximity to Oak-Hickory forests and we hope that the presence of the familiar Oaks will also help make the transition.

With familiar oaks nearby, sufficient water, and a welcoming new home at the Field Museum, we think BHL is well positioned to put down roots in Chicago.