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News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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    Monsters Are Real
    Page Frights
    Her Natural History
    Earth Optimism 2020
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Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts by Grace Costantino

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Unearthing Scientific History through Art: New Insights from the Archives of Lewis David von Schweinitz, the “Father of North American Mycology”

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In 1805, the “Father of North American mycology”, Lewis David von Schweinitz (1780-1834), published an account of the fungi in Niesky, Germany with his friend and mentor, Johannes Baptista von Albertini (1769-1831). Documenting over 1,000 species, including 100 published as new-to-science, Conspectus fungorum in Lusatiae Superioris agro Niskiensi crescentium, e methodo Persooniana is still referenced to this day as a classic mycological text and ecological record.

The Conspectus is illustrated with 12 hand-colored plates based on drawings by Schweinitz, each featuring 6-10 figures of new species described. Whenever possible, Schweinitz based his drawings on fresh specimens, but when this was not an option, he referred to fungarium specimens or to a collection of earlier watercolors he’d created of representative specimens.

Today, these watercolor volumes are dispersed between several American institutions and offer a wealth of insight into the history and development of the Conspectus. The earliest volume of original watercolors related to the Conspectus is the Icones Fungorum Niskiensium, created (ca.) 1798-1802 and held in the archives of the Farlow Reference Library of Cryptogamic Botany at Harvard University. This volume served Schweinitz as a sketchbook of sorts, which he used to inform the final paintings in the Conspectus itself.

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November 1, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Women in Enlightenment Science

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In 1737, Elizabeth Blackwell published the first weekly installment of a very ambitious project. The final work, entitled A Curious Herbal (1737-39), ultimately consisted of 500 plates of plants alongside 111 pages of text providing descriptions of their medicinal uses. Endorsed by the Royal College of Physicians, the publication helped satisfy the need for an up-to-date reference work for apothecaries.

A Curious Herbal is the subject of a chapter in Dr. Anna K. Sagal’s first monograph project, Resisting Gardens: Pedagogy and Natural Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Work. By providing free, online access to relevant literature, such as Blackwell’s Herbal, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has been an important resource for Sagal’s research on the project.

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October 11, 2018byGrace Costantino
BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL at the Joint Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Conference in Dunedin, New Zealand

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On 25 August – 1 September 2018, BHL representatives from around the world traveled to Dunedin, New Zealand to attend the joint Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference. Hosted by the Otago Museum and the University of Otago, the conference represented several firsts, including the first joint meeting of these two organizations plus the first SPNHC meeting in the Southern Hemisphere.

With the theme “Collections and Data in an Uncertain World”, the conference was an opportunity for bioinformatics and natural science collections professionals to exchange ideas and expertise as they explored the myriad intersections between collections and the data generated from them. BHL, an institutional member of TDWG, was proud to be a conference partner for this important event.

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September 20, 2018byGrace Costantino
BHL News, Blog Reel, Tech Updates

Announcing the New “About BHL” Site!

We’re excited to announce the launch of the new About BHL site!

What is BHL’s history? Who’s involved in the Library? What tools and services does BHL offer? How do you search, download content or access data and developer tools in BHL? How can you get involved in the Library? What projects has BHL engaged in?

Find the answers to these questions and much more information about the Biodiversity Heritage Library on our new About site at about.biodiversitylibrary.org!

The new site, which lives alongside and is linked from our digital library portal at

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September 17, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

From the La Brea Tar Pits to the Biodiversity Heritage Library: Exploring Passenger Pigeon Populations in the Western United States

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The passenger pigeon’s demise is one of the most infamous examples of human-caused extinction. Once the most abundant bird species in North America, it was hunted relentlessly, with large-scale commercial hunting facilitated by railroad distribution placing excessive pressure on the species. The population declined from billions to none in less than one hundred years.

The last passenger pigeon, Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden at about 1pm on September 1, 1914.

While stories of passenger pigeon flocks blackening the skies underscore the species’ once staggering abundance, its distribution was concentrated in the eastern United States. But could there have been resident populations in the western U.S.?

Passenger pigeon bones uncovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California inspired Dr. Libby Ellwood to ask this very question and embark on a research project empowered by the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s collections.

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September 13, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Historic Literature Meets Modern Research: Discovering Octocorals in the Deep Sea of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean

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Íris Sampaio, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries at the University of the Azores & Senckenberg am Meer, Germany, has been studying octocoral taxonomy and ecology for eleven years. Résultats des campagnes has had a significant impact on Sampaio’s research, providing her with data on octocoral species collected in the Azores. Thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, she now has easy access to the title’s public domain volumes.

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August 16, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

An Illustrated Natural History of German Frogs: Rösel’s Historia Naturalis Ranarum Nostratium

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Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium has been described as one of the most beautiful works devoted to frogs and amphibians.

The work of German artist and naturalist Johann Rösel von Rosenhof, Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium describes the natural history of all then-known frogs and toads indigenous to the Nuremberg region in Germany. The title is noteworthy first for the extensive, accurate information in the text, printed in two columns in both German and Latin.

The work is equally (if not more) renowned for its illustrations. The twenty-four folio, hand-colored copper engravings portray habitats, anatomy, reproductive behavior, and larval development stages in intricate detail.

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August 2, 2018byGrace Costantino
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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