All posts by ulib-libraryjobs

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Happy Darwin Day!

Today in 1809, Charles Darwin, remembered for his theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection (which was so eloquently outlined in the 1859 publication On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection) was born. We celebrate this day as Darwin Day. In 2011, BHL released Charles Darwin’s Library, a collection of books found in Charles Darwin’s personal library, with his hand-written annotations marked-up and indexed.

February 12, 2015byDavid Kohn and Grace Costantino

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Voilà! Evolution by Means of Natural Selection

In our previous post, David Kohn, Director of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, discussed two Darwin manuscripts illustrating the development of his theory of evolution: excerpts from “Ornithology Notes” and his “Transmutation Notebook D.”

February 12, 2015byGrace Costantino and David Kohn

BHL News, Blog Reel

Empowering Access to Biodiversity Information in Africa

Almost two years ago, BHL Africa officially launched during a three-day workshop hosted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) at the Pretoria National Botanical Garden in Pretoria, South Africa. In the subsequent two years, BHLA has begun digitization at some participating institutions and has drafted a governance framework for the node.

February 11, 2015byGrace Costantino

BHL News, Blog Reel

Notes and News from BHL

We are pleased to announce that the latest BHL Quarterly Report and Newsletter for Winter, 2015, are now available. You’ll notice a new format for our Quarterly Reports and a new design for our newsletters. We’re restructuring our Quarterly Reports as narratives detailing our quarterly activities and presenting content based on three themes: BHL Users, Member and Affiliate Activities, and Science.

January 28, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Wildflowers of Ecuador: Watercolors and eBooks

Every now and then an unusual and exciting opportunity arises to digitize a very unique item. Such an opportunity arrived in the email box of Doug Holland, the director of the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden, one afternoon in January 2014. Anne Hess, daughter of artist Mary Barnas Pomeroy and grand-daughter of artist/teacher Carl Barnas, had decided to donate a collection of artwork and her mother’s unfinished manuscript to the library. It was with great honor that the Raven Library accepted this collection.

January 22, 2015byRandy Smith

Blog Reel, User Stories

Finding Agriculture among Biodiversity: Metadata in Practice

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is committed to providing free and open access to over 500 years of natural history literature from across the globe. Towards that goal, the Library currently contains over 45 million pages of biodiversity content, representing over 155,000 volumes and 90,000 titles. However, hosting the content online is just part of our vision to “inspire discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge.” Users must be able to identify content relevant to their work and interest from amongst this vast corpus.

January 20, 2015byGrace Costantino

Blog Reel, User Stories

Original Publications at our Fingertips

Systematics is the branch of biology concerned with classification and nomenclature. It is sometimes used synonymously with taxonomy. In their 1970 publication Systematics in Support of Biological Research, Michener et al. defined systematic biology and taxonomy as: Identifying species, their relationships and evolutionary hierarchies, is critical to saving biodiversity.

January 13, 2015byGrace Costantino