All posts by michelle.underhill

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.

For this week’s book of the week, we feature the beautiful illustrations of André Marie Constant Duméril’s Erpétologie générale, ou, Histoire naturelle complète des reptiles, found within the 1854 Atlas volume. In this nine volume work, 1,393 species of reptiles and amphibians are described, and “their anatomy, physiology and bibliography are specified.

While much of the focus today has been concentrated on the existing life on planet Earth, and how to protect and preserve it, there is still a great deal of interest, and indeed things to be learned, from that life which has ceased to exist on our planet. With this in mind, we focus this week on the title Animals of the Past (1901) by Frederic A. Lucas.

Last summer, 2010, we implemented a scanning request form by which our user community can request titles to be scanned and added to our ever-growing online collection. The feature was a runaway success, with 787 requests received to date. As we work to fulfill these requests, we thought it might be nice to highlight just a few of the rare item requests we’ve scanned thus far.