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On October 4th & 5th 2012, team members from the Art of Life project held a meeting at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.  While team members had been collaborating virtually since the beginning of the project in May of 2012, this was the first time all team members had met in-person.  Institutions represented were from Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT), Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), the University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder); and Washington University, St Louis (WUSTL).The goals of the meeting were to review: 1) overall workflows2) feedback on the schema draft that was publicly posted August 2012

On September 27-28, 2012, thirty-one staff members representing all 14 BHL member institutions convened at the Ernst Mayr Library at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University for the 2012 BHL Staff and Technical Meeting. As a combined meeting, it brought together not only those that manage the digitization workflow at each member institution, but also those that work to keep BHL’s technical infrastructure running smoothly and constantly improving.

In early August, I had the privilege of representing the Encyclopedia of Life and the Biodiversity Heritage Library at an exhibitor’s booth at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. The theme for the 2012 annual meeting was: Life on Earth: Preserving, Utilizing and Sustaining our Ecosystems. This theme certainly fits the broader goals of EOL and BHL.

In 1876, two men by the names of Frederick Godman and Osbert Salvin began work on perhaps the most comprehensive account of the flora and fauna of Mexico and Central America ever undertaken. Entitled Biologia Centrali Americana, this 63 volume work, published over the course of 36 years, relates nearly all information known at the time on the mammals, birds, fish, mollusks, insects, arachnids, and botany in the region. Accompanied by over 1,600 lithographic plates, 900 of which are colored, Biologia Centrali Americana is arguably the single most authoritative work on Mexico and Central America’s turn-of-the-century biodiversity and constitutes a perfect candidate to help us celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month!