All posts by michelle.underhill

Over the past few weeks, you’ve heard a lot about our recent meetings and world travels in Berlin, Germany and Cape Town, South Africa. The BHL-Europe, BHL-Global, and BHL-Africa meetings were incredibly productive, paving the way for the future development of both the existing global BHL network as well as the inception of a new BHL node in sub-Saharan Africa. As you can imagine, such meetings, though undeniably rewarding, also require quite a bit of work, so the final weekend of our escapades, we decided it was time to “play” and, in true BHL spirit, explore the country’s wildlife in person, through a safari at Inverdoorn Game Reserve and Safari Lodge.

On April 30, 2012, the BHL-Europe project officially came to an end. Through the development of a multi-lingual portal and associated tools, BHL-Europe strives to make European biodiversity knowledge available to everyone. To celebrate the project, BHL-E hosted a variety of workshops and meetings June 4-8, 2012, in Berlin, Germany. The events included a Symposium on Communicating Biological Diversity (June 4), a BHL-Europe Demonstration and Training Workshop (June 5), a closed official review with European Commission representatives (BHL-Europe is an Eu-funded project), and a 2-day BHL-Global meeting (June 7-8). Representatives from around the globe, including twelve members of the BHL-US/UK project, attended the events.

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In October, 2011, BHL Staff conducted a usability test of the BHL US/UK portal, assessing its functionality and comparing it with that of the BHL-Australia portal. While several recommendations arose from that exercise, two of the most emphatic were a need to improve the BHL search functionality and a desire to make the BHL US/UK portal more aesthetically pleasing.