All posts by Grace Costantino

Per our user feature earlier this week on Dr. Charlotte Sleigh of the University of Kent, we feature a book that has been particularly important for Dr. Sleigh’s recent work: Dissertations relative to the natural history of animals and vegetables , volume 2 (1789), by Lazzaro Spallanzani. Dr. Sleigh’s current activities involve writing a book on the cultural history of frogs for Reaktion Books’ Animal series.

Continuing with our new series on our users and their interaction with BHL, this week we feature Dr. Charlotte Sleigh, Senior Lecturer in History of Science, University of Kent (UK), which we present in a typical question and answer interview style. So without further ado, meet Dr. Sleigh, and read what she has to say about how BHL has impacted her work, and what she would like to see from BHL in the future.

It’s one of the most frequently downloaded books from BHL. It was compiled over thirty years, in twelve volumes, and contains 794 copper plate engravings. It depicts and describes the flora of Asia and the tropics, focusing on the medicinal properties of the flora in the Indian state of Kerala. Species names are recorded in such languages as Konkani, Arabic, Malayalam, and Latin. It contains the type illustrations of many species, and was first published in Amsterdam in 1678-1693.

Here at BHL, we want to do a better job of connecting with our users. We want to interact with you, know what you think, what you would like to see, and have you contribute to the biodiversity conversation that shapes the development and progress of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The recent debut of our new series on this blog, focusing on our users and how they use BHL for their work, is an example of our passion to get to know you, our users, more, and interact in new ways with you. However, the blog is not the only way we hope to accomplish this.

For this week’s book of the week, we highlight an eight volume title, Flore pittoresque et médicale des Antilles, ou, Histoire naturelle des plantes usuelles des colonies françaises, anglaises, espagnoles et portugaise (1821-1829), by Michel Étienne Descourtilz. The stunning illustrations in this work were completed by Descourtilz’s son, Jean Théodore Descourtilz. This work is the first that Jean Théodore Descourtilz was known to have illustrated.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Today, February 3rd, 2011, is the start of the Year of the Rabbit, also called Xin Mao. By the Chinese calendar, it is also the year 4708.

In honor of the Year of the Rabbit, this week we highlight The Rabbit (1898), by James Edmund Harting, and present some interesting facts gleaned from this work regarding our furry friends.

So, you’ve got an iPad or another eBook reader, and you’re thinking, “BHL was just made for this!” It can be a little tricky to determine how best to use BHL on your reader or iPad, so we thought we’d take a few minutes to publish some tips that might help. So…

First off, you always have the option to simply download the PDF from BHL and view your content that way. If you’re using an iPad or iPod Touch, you’ll need an application that will let you read these PDFs, such as GoodReader. If you go to the BHL website and choose the option to download the PDF on your iPad, your iPad should then give you the option to open the PDF with any one of the eBook reader applications you have installed.