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News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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Campaigns
    Fossil Stories
    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 Kirsten Hostetler

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Book of the Week: Wallace’s Second Place Finish

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History never looks too kindly on second place. Neil Armstrong rolls off the tongue as the first man to walk on the moon, but most people hesitate at Buzz Aldrin. Mack Robinson came from a famously athletic family–older brother to Jackie Robinson–and broke the 200-meter world record in the 1936 Olympics. Of course his name is merely the answer to an obscure trivia question as he didn’t win the gold, second only to Jesse Owens. Charles Darwin is so closely associated with evolution and natural selection that his name literally serves as a synonym for the theory.

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November 7, 2013byKirsten Hostetler
BHL News, Blog Reel

Stormy Waters, Venomous Snakes and a Cup of Coffee: My Experience as a BHL Marketing Intern

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A blinking cursor on a blank screen. 137 million objects, 8.2 million digitized items, illustrations and photographs, artifacts and first editions, spanning 19 institutions, 9 research centers, and hundreds of years. Where to begin? It didn’t begin earlier this summer when I started working as the marketing intern at the BHL, and it didn’t begin earlier this year when I originally applied for the position. It probably didn’t even begin when I enrolled in the University of Washington’s master of library and information science iSchool. For the sake of argument, I’d say the beginning for me was when I was 6 years old and took my first trip to Washington, D.C.

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September 24, 2013byKirsten Hostetler
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Book of the Week: The Curious Cures

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Take two of these and call in the morning. Those aren’t unusual words coming from a doctor if the “two of these” refers to some aspirin or Tylenol. It’d be a little more curious if the prescription called for two stalks of mugwort, infused with wine and a dash of salt. An interesting remedy for the common malady, but not something easily procured from the corner drug store.
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September 19, 2013byKirsten Hostetler
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Book of the Week: Don’t Tread On Me

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Ophidiophobia is the irrational fear of snakes–those slithering, scaly reptiles that have been cast as the archetypal villain throughout history. Their unnatural movements and eerily flexible jaw joints do nothing to lessen their evil reputation.

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September 12, 2013byKirsten Hostetler
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Book of the Week: The Berry That Changed The World

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It’s been called the drink of civilization. The beverage that reflects the entire history of the Western world in one gulp. A small berry has sparked revolutions, genocide, imperialism, innovation–and yet is still able to satisfy the standard caffeine craving every morning. Coffee is a powerful concoction, serving as inspiration for most activities before lunch, and, this week, it also serves as inspiration for the Book of the Week, “Coffee; its history and also its remarkable growth in the world of commerce.” Most people would easily be able to pick a coffee bean out of a line up, but finding the coffee in nature might be more difficult.

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August 29, 2013byKirsten Hostetler
Blog Reel

Happy Birthday to John Torrey!

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It’s hard to imagine how the wild, western terrain of the United States looked just 200 years ago—try to replace the suburban communities, bright lights, interconnected highways, and towering buildings with the uninhibited growth of native plants in considerable number and variety occupying undeveloped and spacious lands. The pioneers that ventured beyond the Mississippi into this vast unknown were exalted as executors of manifest destiny, responsible for territorial expansion of the fledgling county.
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August 15, 2013byKirsten Hostetler
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Book of the Week: Adventures on the North Sea

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The North Sea—at least according to Walter Wood—was awash in blood and fish.

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August 8, 2013byKirsten Hostetler

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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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