The Biodiversity Heritage Library is dedicated to providing open access to the biodiversity resources in its collection. Open access not only ensures that users the world over can freely locate the information they need online, but it also enables other biodiversity initiatives to make use of the wealth of knowledge represented in our 45 million+ pages to support research and taxonomy.
It’s President’s Day (recognized as Washington’s Birthday – the event for which this holiday was originally established – on the federal calendar) in the United States. We decided to commemorate the day with a look at the varied and sometimes remarkable biodiversity that has graced the White House since our first president in 1789. There are of course the usual suspects – dogs, cats and birds – and some not as readily available in your local pet store, including tigers, elephants, and pygmy hippos! By far the most popular type of animal owned by presidents over the years is the dog.
Today in 1809, Charles Darwin, remembered for his theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection (which was so eloquently outlined in the 1859 publication On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection) was born. We celebrate this day as Darwin Day. In 2011, BHL released Charles Darwin’s Library, a collection of books found in Charles Darwin’s personal library, with his hand-written annotations marked-up and indexed.
In our previous post, David Kohn, Director of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, discussed two Darwin manuscripts illustrating the development of his theory of evolution: excerpts from “Ornithology Notes” and his “Transmutation Notebook D.”
Almost two years ago, BHL Africa officially launched during a three-day workshop hosted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) at the Pretoria National Botanical Garden in Pretoria, South Africa. In the subsequent two years, BHLA has begun digitization at some participating institutions and has drafted a governance framework for the node.
There will be a planned outage of the BHL website for site maintenance starting Thursday 2/12 at 6pm CST (12am Feb. 13 GMT) to last approximately 3 hours. The 3 hour outage is an estimate, but we will work to have services restored as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
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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