All posts in BHL News

BHL Program Director Martin Kalfatovic and Harvard Botany Librarian Judy Warnement attended the 7th Annual Global Plants meeting. Chuck Miller (Missouri Botanical Garden) serves on the GPI Steering Committee. The Global Plants Initiative, originally sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, has provided funding for the digitization of herbarium specimens and related materials that are made available via the JSTOR Global Plants platform. JSTOR Global Plants/GPI provides a worldwide audience with invaluable access to botanical information.

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Women’s Committee awarded a one-year grant to Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) to build online exhibitions to showcase the scientific and historical contributions of Women and Latino naturalists and illustrators.

How can data analysis help us improve our social media activities? This was the fundamental question BHL’s Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace Costantino, sought to address during her two-day meeting with Ryerson University’s Social Media Lab, Sept. 29-30, 2014. As co-participants in the Mining Biodiversity Digging Into Data project, BHL has been collaborating virtually with Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd, the Lab’s Director, since early 2014.

What are the impact and implications of social media on society?

This question was the fundamental discussion point of the Social Media and Society 2014 conference in Toronto, Canada, Sept. 27-28, 2014.

For the past year, BHL-Australia has been very quiet. So quiet, in fact, you would be forgiven for forgetting we exist (unless of course you read about our contribution to the new BHL website). Why the silence? Because, in 2013, we ran out of funding. Our digitisation work didn’t stop, however. Deep in the Museum Victoria library, six dedicated volunteers (supervised by equally dedicated library staff) continued to scan and process volumes from our collections and upload them into BHL. We are now thrilled to announce that BHL-Au is back in full force.

My earliest memory of the Natural History Museum is climbing the steps to see the “stuffed animal zoo.” It was a very rainy day and our plans of visiting the National Zoo were put on hold. However, my mom had an idea so that I- only about four or five at the time- could still see animals. I had no idea at the time what exactly she meant by “stuffed animal,” but I had a blast and returned frequently during our yearly trips up from Florida. The stairs seemed so much taller back then. Now they’re just a quick jaunt up to something much more than a place to escape the rain. As the years and visits went by, I found that I did not get bored by the many visits.