All posts in BHL News

We first launched our article download functionality back in January of 2009, giving users the ability to create their own PDF of selected pages from an item in BHL. Since that time, over 79,000 articles have been created by our users. That’s an average of 80 articles created each day (thanks WolframAlpha.com)! Clearly the ability to create your own PDF of selected pages, rather than download the entire book or volume, is a useful service; something we have been working on to make improvements whenever possible.

Funding for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) comes from a number of sources. Over the past few years, we have been reliant on the generous support of a number of different foundations, directly or through grants to individual BHL members. These foundations include the MacArthur Foundation, the Moore Foundation, the Lounsberry Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Keck Foundation. A number of the BHL members have also received grants from the United States government, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the National Science Foundation.

If you’re active in social media, chances are you’ve already discovered our presence on a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest and Twitter (for a list of all of our social media accounts, visit our public wiki). You can now also see linked icons to each of our social media platforms on the lower left-hand side of BHL’s home page.

If you’ve visited our site in the past few days, or follow our blog, you know that BHL now has a new and improved logo! We have our friends at BHL-Australia to thank for this exciting new development, as our logo is a modified version of their own eye-catching design. Before the BHL-Au logo designer, Simon O’Shea, left the BHL-Au project for a new assignment with Lonely Planet, he contributed his creative talent to adapt his original design for our use. He also provided style guidelines that can help extend the use of the logo globally.

BHL has made some big changes today. Our site now features a new logo, a new “Donate” button and enhanced social media functionality that significantly improves the way you can interact with and share BHL content.

Ever wanted to take a break and scan through some of the cool images of flora and fauna in the BHL collection? With the BHL Flickr account, you can!

Besides being a low-barrier and fun(!) way of displaying our images, Flickr offers us the opportunity to enhance our collections through citizen science in the form of species name tagging.

The newest addition to the BHL global family, BHL-Australia, has now launched. BHL in Australia is the digital literature component of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), a national project that aims to make biodiversity information more accessible and useable on line. It is a partnership between CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, the Australian natural history collections community and the Australian Government.