All posts by Grace Costantino

Like proud parents, we’re excited to announce that today BHL turns 5 years old! In 2007, the Biodiversity Heritage Library portal was launched with 306 titles, 3,236 volumes, and 1,271,664 pages of taxonomic literature, presented via a simple portal bathed in earthy tones. What began as a consortium of just 10 natural history and botanical libraries has today grown into a global project, with 14 US/UK consortium members as well as BHL nodes on every continent in the world except Antarctica.

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In October, 2011, BHL Staff conducted a usability test of the BHL US/UK portal, assessing its functionality and comparing it with that of the BHL-Australia portal. While several recommendations arose from that exercise, two of the most emphatic were a need to improve the BHL search functionality and a desire to make the BHL US/UK portal more aesthetically pleasing.

Happy Earth Day 2012! Here at BHL, we believe we can all make a difference to improve the health of our planet and its biodiversity. By providing researchers (and the public) with free access to literature about the world’s species, we’re empowering them with the knowledge necessary to better understand and protect life on earth. If you believe in the importance of this mission as much as we do, consider giving a gift to BHL. Together, we can make a difference for generations to come.