All posts in Blog Reel

With well over 35,000 titles to choose from, the BHL book of the week selection can sometimes be a daunting task. (Each title more thrilling than the last!) So this week, I decided to play a game with you to arrive at the next selection. We’ll dig deep into the repository and maybe find a path to something unexpected. According to our most recent poll, Invertebrate Zoology beats out Botany by a nose as the most popular area of biodiversity research. So, because we need a 1st degree and a 6th degree, and it’s cheating to have the one making the connections do the picking, I humbly ask for your participation to test my librarian’s mettle. Please suggest (in the comments) an IZ scientist–or even a title–for me to connect with a Botanist’s work or otherwise significant figure.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is coming into a new era complete with a new look, new content, and new features. The first, most obvious, change will be the adoption of a new BLUE color scheme. Users will not be faced with the need to adapt to a new UI environment; we’re simply changing color as a way of marking BHL’s evolution.

In the history of scientific serials, every now and then out of the great list of titles emerges a singular work from an organization of scientists or a society. Records show that the Brooklyn Conchological Club published only a single volume – Volume 1, Number 1 (1907) – of the Bulletin of the Brooklyn Conchological Club.

Living biodiversity may be the most common topic of discussion in most books found within BHL, but BHL also contains some gems discussing extinct animals as well. One such books is Palaeontology, or, A systematic summary of extinct animals and their geological relations (1860). This important work was written by Sir Richard Owen, an English botanist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist.

Today’s book of the week comes to us from an entomologist who also enjoyed a brief stint as a librarian. British beetles transferred from Curtis’s British entomology by Edward Wesley Janson exemplifies intellectual collaboration within the entomological community during the 19th century, when bug-collecting enjoyed heightened popularity among the general public.