All posts by michelle.underhill

BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL Receives 2015 Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives award for Field Notes Project

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has selected the “Biodiversity Heritage Library Field Notes Project” for a 2015 Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives award. The award of $491,713 will help support increased accessibility to original scientific documentation found in archival field notes in participating institution collections. Field notes provide valuable, primary research data about species and ecosystems that is often unpublished or unavailable through other sources.

January 7, 2016byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, Featured Books

An Artist Steps Out of the Shadows: Using Social Media to Solve a Question of Identity

Over the years, we’ve discovered that social media is a pretty awesome way to learn more about our collections. Recently, a Twitter conversation helped us unravel the true identity of an incredible natural history artist. In November, one of our star citizen scientists Siobhan Leachman was working on adding artist machine tags to images in the BHL Flickr (want to learn more about how to do that? See this guide!). She was working on Wonders of the Bird World (1921), which was digitized for BHL by Cornell University Library. The title page stated that it was illustrated by A.T. Elwes.

December 31, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, Featured Books

In Search of the White Whale: A Legend, a Fossil, a Living Mammal

1820. Far west of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. A whaleship pursues a pod of sperm whales. Suddenly, an eighty-five foot long giant charges the ship, ramming it with its head not once, but twice, caving in the bows and sending the ship to a watery grave. This is the story of the sinking of the Essex, the subject of Ron Howard’s movie adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s novel In the Heart of the Sea, opening this Friday.

December 9, 2015byGrace Costantino

BHL News, Blog Reel, Tech Updates

New Feature on BHL: Add Comments to a Book!

UPDATE: A new and enhanced commenting system is being planned for BHL. The commenting system described below has been disabled as of July 5, 2016. | We are pleased to announce that we have added the ability to add comments to books in the BHL website! This new feature will allow you to easily share your discoveries while reading BHL books, highlight interesting content, post your expertise for others to see, engage in conversations about BHL books from directly within BHL, and easily discover all of the great posts from your fellow biodiversity-enthusiasts.

December 2, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories, User Stories

From the Experts: Recommended Fossil Books!

We hope you’ve been enjoying the fossil-mania this week with Fossil Stories! We’ve been exploring the fascinating history of paleontology, learning some great fossil facts, and hearing from experts (via a series of live webcasts) about current fossil research. Our posts have demonstrated the important role that natural history publications have played in the history of paleontology. These works disseminated new research and ideas, documented the evolution of human knowledge about fossils and their origins, and recorded the first scientific descriptions of many ancient creatures. But this literature is important not just for the historical information it provides.

October 16, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Illustrating Fossil Plants: The Enigmatic Artis

Phytology is an historic term, not widely used today, for the study of plants. Antediluvian was a term much used by early paleontologists to describe the “time before the great Biblical flood.” These two terms are necessary to understand the title of an important work in paleobotany: Antediluvian Phytology (1838), by Edmund Tyrell Artis. The formal study of paleobotany has roots in 1828, when Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, known as the Father of Paleobotany, published Histoire des végétaux fossiles. A decade after this publication, Artis’ work was published.

October 16, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Fossil Stories

Uncovering the Truth about Fossil Feces: Buckland, Anning, and Coprolites

When most people think about fossils, they generally think of body fossils, which are fossilized remains of parts of an organism’s body. But there is another type of fossil: trace fossils. Trace fossils are geological records of biological activity, and they provide important insight into an animal’s behavior. One important trace fossil, which provides information about an animal’s diet, is the coprolite. That’s a fancy way of saying fossilized feces. When coprolites were first discovered, they were identified as fossilized fir tree cones or bezoar stones. Bezoar stones were undigested masses found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, and were once believed to have magical properties, capable of neutralizing any poison.

October 16, 2015byGrace Costantino

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All posts by michelle.underhill

BHL Receives 2015 Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives award for Field Notes Project

An Artist Steps Out of the Shadows: Using Social Media to Solve a Question of Identity

In Search of the White Whale: A Legend, a Fossil, a Living Mammal

New Feature on BHL: Add Comments to a Book!

From the Experts: Recommended Fossil Books!

Illustrating Fossil Plants: The Enigmatic Artis

Uncovering the Truth about Fossil Feces: Buckland, Anning, and Coprolites

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