All posts by Bianca Crowley

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. 

Through ongoing collaborative collection building and digitization, the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library (NAL) is partnering with the Biodiversity Heritage Library to support biodiversity and scientific research in Ukraine with the release of the Ukrainian Українська Collection. BHL and NAL stand with the people of Ukraine and echo the support of its consortium partner institutions in their condemnation of the Russian Federation’s invasion.

The threat to Ukraine’s cultural heritage materials remains substantial during the wartime humanitarian crisis. Many libraries and cultural heritage institutions throughout Ukraine have been severely damaged or destroyed, resulting in the permanent loss of culturally and scientifically significant content. Through the digitization of historic materials related to biodiversity research in Ukraine, this project will help support Ukraine’s scientific community by providing access to these important resources.

Our latest bi-annual newsletter is now available! From saving pirated research journals to releasing our new Collection Development Policy, don’t miss the latest news from the BHL community.

View our November 2022 Bi-annual Newsletter.

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.