All posts by Grace Costantino

Continuing with our theme, here are the next 4 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. The first three feature recipients of the JRS African digitization scholarship, which funded the expenses of nine visitors from Africa to both attend the conference and an additional meeting on Wednesday (Nov. 16th) with the express purpose of discussing biodiversity literature digitization in Africa (expect more information on this meeting in a future post). The fourth interview is that of Dr. Jinzhong Cui, the director of BHL-China. All interviews are available on the Life and Literature website.

Now we present the next 3 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. All of these interviews are available on the Life and Literature website.

Continuing with our posting of the Life and Literature conference attendee interviews, below you will find the next 3 out of the 17 interviews, all of which are available on the Life and Literature website.

As we continue to explore the various outcomes of the Life and Literature conference, two common questions we receive are, “Who was at the conference” and “What did they have to say about it or BHL?” If you are also asking yourself these questions, then you’re in luck! While at the conference, we conducted interviews with several of the attendees, asking them these very things. And we’ve made these interviews available on the Life and Literature website.

This week for our book of the week, we feature a title that Charles Darwin himself called “one of the great monuments of science in the 19th century.” The book? Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale(1835-47), by Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny. The work chronicles d’Orbigny’s travels to South America for the Paris Museum from 1826-1833. As a result of this voyage, d’Orbigny returned to Paris with more than 10,000 natural history specimens.

It’s almost Halloween, and to celebrate, we wanted to feature a book that properly connoted the Halloween spirit. What did we find? Observations Suggested by the Cattle Plague, About Witchcraft, Credulity, Superstition, Parliamentary Reform, and Other Matters (1866), by H. Strickland Constable. This book is a delightful, tongue-in-cheek discussion of the unconventional cures for ailments and diseases that were popularly accepted during the time period. You might be asking, why is this kind of a book in BHL? The answer: Cattle!

Several months ago, we introduced a new BHL logo, and to publicize the event, we published a blog post that detailed the various images that BHL Staff Members saw within the abstract lines of our new logo. At the end of the post, we asked our users to share their interpretations of the logo with us as well. Many of you did, and, as promised, we’re sharing those today. We send a special thanks to all of you who shared your thoughts with us, and if our logo inspires other ideas, don’t hesitate to share them by commenting on this blog, sending us a tweet (@BioDivLibrary), or posting on our Facebook wall.