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Friday, March 20, 2015, we celebrated the March equinox (and, incidentally, a total solar eclipse!), when the sun appears to cross the celestial equator heading northward. In the northern hemisphere, this is also known as the vernal equinox. For those in the southern hemisphere, it means that autumn is upon them, and cold days are ahead. But for those of us in the northern hemisphere, it means that Spring is officially here! The coming of spring is therapeutic for many – a time for new life, a break from the grayness of winter, and a signal to get the trowels, shovels, and gardening gloves out.

All this week we’re celebrating the art, history, and science of gardening with our Garden Stories event, highlighting over 14,000 seed and nursery catalogs in BHL, featuring over 2,500 art images from seed catalogs, and providing great gardening tips and resources on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr,

Spring is coming! Get your trowels ready! We’re excited to announce BHL’s spring event, “Garden Stories,” which will occur March 23-27, 2015.

“Garden Stories” is a week long social media event for garden lovers.

Zooniverse unveils its latest project called Science Gossip which is an investigation into the making and communication of science in both the Victorian period and today. This project is born from a collaboration between an Arts and Humanities Research Council project in the UK, called ‘Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries’ (ConSciCom) and the Missouri Botanical Garden who provided content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). The publication of books and periodicals are key locations for knowledge about the natural world.

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.

There will be a planned outage of the BHL website for site maintenance starting Thursday 2/12 at 6pm CST (12am Feb. 13 GMT) to last approximately 3 hours. The 3 hour outage is an estimate, but we will work to have services restored as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.

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.