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News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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    Garden Stories
    Monsters Are Real
    Page Frights
    Her Natural History
    Earth Optimism 2020
Tech Blog
Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts by Martin R. Kalfatovic

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Farewell to Brood X (2021) — See You in 2038!

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By the time this post publishes, the vast majority of Brood X (2021) will have completed their above ground lifecycle. The vast numbers of adult Magicicada who first emerged in late April and early May will have disappeared, leaving behind their adult bodies as well as still massive numbers of exuviae (cast-off outer skins) from when they emerged as nymphs.

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July 13, 2021byMartin R. Kalfatovic
Blog Reel, Featured Books

The Magic of the Magicicada: Exploring Brood X Through Books in BHL

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On 10 May, I had my first sighting of this year’s periodical cicada in Northern Virginia. For seventeen years, three species of Magicicada, the periodical cicada (M. septendecim, M. cassinii, M. septendecula)[1] have been living about 61 cm (2 feet) underground beneath trees across portions of eastern North America. In May 2021, individuals in Brood X (sometimes known as the Great Eastern Brood) began to emerge in the trillions from their long sojourn when soil temperature reached a consistent temperature of 18 degrees C (64 degrees F) or higher.

The last time Brood X emerged was in 2004. For those who witnessed that appearance, or previous ones, Brood X at times feels like a science fiction movie with the creatures swarming and the loud (up to 90 decibel) mating song of the males drowning out conversations (I wonder how the rest of the world will react to our Zoom call being joined by singing cicadas!).

Magicicada are mostly harmless, neither biting nor stinging. Members of the order Hemiptera, the nymphs spend their underground life harmlessly consuming xylem fluids from the roots of deciduous forest trees; the adult female, which deposits its eggs in small slits cut into the ends of branches, rarely causes damage to mature trees and there is speculation that the cicada pruning leads to more abundant leafing and fruiting the following year.

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May 20, 2021byMartin R. Kalfatovic
BHL News, Blog Reel

2021 BHL Annual Meeting — Global and Virtual

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Like many organizations around the world, the Biodiversity Heritage Library was compelled, for the second year in a row, to move the 2021 BHL Annual Meeting to a virtual environment. In consultation with our prospective 2021 host, the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris, the BHL Executive Committee again made the difficult, yet necessary, decision to move to a virtual meeting, but one that would be much enhanced from 2020 with a goal of trying to recreate the interaction and programmatic content of our in-person meetings.

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May 6, 2021byMartin R. Kalfatovic
BHL News, Blog Reel

2020 BHL Annual Meeting — Global and Virtual

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Like many organizations around the world, the Biodiversity Heritage Library was compelled to move the 2020 BHL Annual Meeting to a virtual environment. In consultation with our prospective 2020 hosts, the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris, the BHL Executive Committee made the difficult, yet necessary, decision on 11 March 2020 to move to a virtual meeting rescheduled from April to May.

The 2020 BHL Virtual Annual Meeting was conducted over the course of May 2020. The Executive Committee and Secretariat staff provided pre-recorded video presentations which were made available to the BHL partner community in early May. Three video calls were hosted at various time zones in mid- to late-May to allow for the widest participation and the least inconvenience for partners. These three calls brought together 38 participants from 24 institutions and organizations, representing eight countries, and provided an opportunity for interaction and discussion even while separated by (in some cases great) distances.

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June 16, 2020byMartin R. Kalfatovic
BHL News, Blog Reel

A Fond Farewell to Carolyn Sheffield (BHL Program Manager)

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The Biodiversity Heritage Library’s loss is the gain of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. Carolyn Sheffield, BHL Program Manager, will be taking on a newly developed position as Associate Director, Library Technology and Digital Strategies effective March 4, 2019.

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February 26, 2019byMartin R. Kalfatovic
BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL Statement on the Fire at the National Museum of Brazil

On behalf of the Biodiversity Heritage Library community, the BHL Executive Committee, chaired by Constance Rinaldo (Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University) and the BHL Secretariat, led by Martin Kalfatovic (Smithsonian Libraries),  offer our condolences for the irreparable losses sustained by the National Museum of Brazil (Museu Nacional) in the tragic fire of 2 September 2018.

BHL staff are currently in communication with our colleagues at BHL SciELO in São Paulo to expedite processing of additional volumes of Archivos do Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro for the BHL. We are also exploring additional ways that the BHL’s extensive collection of biodiversity literature can support the work of researchers and scholars of the National Museum.

Em solidariedade ao Museu Nacional do Brasil.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library

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September 10, 2018byMartin R. Kalfatovic and Constance Rinaldo
BHL News, Blog Reel

Botany 2018: The Future of Digital Projects for Research & Teaching in Botany

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BHL Program Director Martin Kalfatovic was invited to participate in a symposium, hosted by JSTOR Global Plants, at Botany 2018 in Rochester, MN entitled The Future of Digital Projects for Research & Teaching in Botany.

The symposium addressed questions such as: what existing digital projects in botany have been successful and how did they become so; what areas of need should future projects explore; how do we define success for digital projects; how do digital projects directed at students differ from those aimed at the researcher; how can we use digital projects to reach new students and interested lay people; and how are new digital projects funded and supported for the long term.

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August 7, 2018byMartin R. Kalfatovic
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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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