All posts by Grace Costantino

  In the 16th century, the ocean was a terrifying place. Creatures of unimaginable size and ferocity stalked the waters. One such beast was Soe Orm. Olaus Magnus gave this gripping description of his sea serpent, accompanied by an equally formidable woodcut, in the 1555 masterpiece Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (ca. 1557 edition available in BHL).

In the 6th century AD, St. Brendan, an Irish cleric, and eighteen other monks, sailed out from Ireland to cross the ocean. Amidst their journey, they came upon a black, treeless island and decided to make camp for the night. Several monks set up a cooking station and lit a fire. And then the island began to move. Terrified, the monks fled back to their boat, leaving the food and fire behind. St.

“HIC SUNT DRACONES.” This phrase translates from the Latin as “here are dragons.” It is etched on the eastern coast of Asia on one of the oldest terrestrial globe maps, the Lenox Globe, dating to 1510. Though the phrase itself is found on only one other historical artifact, a 1504 globe crafted on an ostrich egg, the depiction of monsters and mythological beasts are common on early maps.

BHL is pleased to welcome the National Library Board, Singapore as a new member in BHL Central and simultaneously as BHL-Singapore, the newest node in Global BHL. The 16th member of the BHL Central consortium, BHL Singapore will help identify and digitize historical science literature from its collections and add these to the BHL’s online holdings, where all materials may be accessed free by the public. “The Biodiversity Heritage Library is the preeminent global repository for historic science literature,” said Martin Kalfatovic, BHL Program Director and Associate Director for Digital Services at the Smithsonian Libraries.

We are pleased to announce that the USDA National Agricultural Library (NAL) has joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library as a BHL Affiliate. BHL has already ingested over 845,000 pages of NAL-digitized content made openly available within the Internet Archive. This formal partnership will allow us to strengthen our collection of agricultural-related content through direct collaboration with NAL.

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) comprises one of the largest collections of materials devoted to agriculture in the world.

In 1682, the first known microscopic depiction of pollen appeared in Nehemiah Grew’s Anatomy of Plants. Grew, now known as the “Father of Plant Anatomy,” revolutionized botanical science with his studies of plant structure. Exploiting the power of the microscope, he outlined key morphological differences in plant stems and roots and proposed the hypothesis that stamens are a plant’s male reproductive organs. Science has progressed significantly since the 17th century. Microscopes are no longer novel but commonplace, and scientists occupy their minds with theories about dark matter and quarks.

How can data analysis help us improve our social media activities? This was the fundamental question BHL’s Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace Costantino, sought to address during her two-day meeting with Ryerson University’s Social Media Lab, Sept. 29-30, 2014. As co-participants in the Mining Biodiversity Digging Into Data project, BHL has been collaborating virtually with Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd, the Lab’s Director, since early 2014.