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Over the years, the BHL consortium has grown from its initial core of 10 members to now 15 member institutions across the United States and the United Kingdom. Find out more about who we are with this handy, interactive Google map:While each institution contributes its own unique set of materials to the BHL collection, many of our collections share similar materials. Thank goodness we do because we rely on each other to help fill in gaps in the BHL corpus. But this is easier said than done. Have you ever tried to amass a complete set of 90+ year old objects into one place?!

Cross-dressing seems to have been a botanical fad in the 18th century – the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (responsible for the system by which we name animals and plants today) famously posed in an authentic Sami costume from Lapland, not realising it was a woman’s outfit. Jeanne Baret (or Baré or Barrett – spelling was not as fixed and consistent in the 18th century as it is now) dressed as a boy to accompany the voyage of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in circumnavigating the globe; the voyage itself was an exercise in saving face after the disastrous French defeat to the British during the Seven Years War (when Britain gained control of Quebec). The intrepid Baret certainly saw more of the world than the notoriously stay-at-home Linnaeus, even though her name today is not well-known.

The Field Book Project (FBP) and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) are pleased to bring you a joint blog series showcasing some of the best examples of digital connections between museum specimens, field book catalog records, and the resulting publications for three notable expeditions. This four part series will continue over the coming months. Ever wonder what it takes to understand the full story of historical expedition science? Read on!