All posts in Blog Reel

In October, 2011, BHL Staff conducted a usability test of the BHL US/UK portal, assessing its functionality and comparing it with that of the BHL-Australia portal. While several recommendations arose from that exercise, two of the most emphatic were a need to improve the BHL search functionality and a desire to make the BHL US/UK portal more aesthetically pleasing.

Happy Earth Day 2012! Here at BHL, we believe we can all make a difference to improve the health of our planet and its biodiversity. By providing researchers (and the public) with free access to literature about the world’s species, we’re empowering them with the knowledge necessary to better understand and protect life on earth. If you believe in the importance of this mission as much as we do, consider giving a gift to BHL. Together, we can make a difference for generations to come.

This week, we’re proud to feature Anders Hagborg, an associate at the Field Museum with an academic background in theoretic and applied physics. Though his professional career centered on information technology, he took up an interest in botany after retirement and currently applies this newfound passion to work at the Field Museum. As an additional note of interest, Anders grew up, studied and worked in Sweden until moving to Chicago in 1985.

BHL is one of the first key data sets that is being used in the test bed for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Not sure what the DPLA is? Well, it’s a bold initiative to create a large scale digital library for the United States and the world.

As many of you know, BHL Project Director Tom Garnett officially retired on March 24, 2012.Tom oversaw the growth of BHL from the idea of coordinated digitization by Natural History and Botanical Garden libraries into a cooperative of fourteen US and UK members and global nodes in Europe, Australia, China, Brazil, and Egypt.