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Since its inception, the Field Book Project has evolved from a single project focused on cataloging Smithsonian collections into a growing portfolio of projects, at first focusing on enhancing access to those same collections through conservation and digitization of the Smithsonian materials, and now as a multi-institutional digital initiative to provide open access to field notes through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

In 2011, Australia joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library and, led by Museums Victoria, began to digitize the rare books, historic journals and archival material related to Australia’s biodiversity, and to make them openly available online. There are now 15 Australian organizations contributing to BHL and over 300 worldwide. These include museums, herbaria, royal societies, field naturalists clubs and government organizations. Just this week the number of volumes digitized for BHL by Australian organizations surpassed 1,000, amounting to over 200,000 pages. The great majority of this digitization work was done by the BHL Australia team at Melbourne Museum.

April was a busy month for all of us residents! We attended and presented at two conferences in two different cities: first, at the 4th annual DPLAFest in Chicago and then the NDSR Symposium in Washington D.C. the following week. Our presentations at these two conferences challenged us to think in new ways and demonstrated the support that the cohort and mentor model is designed to provide. In between preparing for and presenting at conferences, we have also been progressing on our projects and at our host institutions.