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BHL is pleased to announce that it has added its bibliographic records to OCLC’s WorldCat® database, “the world’s largest network of library content and services.” You can now find BHL e-books via https://www.worldcat.org/. With thousands of libraries worldwide participating in OCLC, contributing our records to this “global library cooperative” allows us to extend the discoverability and access of BHL e-books through its variety of tools and services.

BHL’s digital library provides free and open online access to over 250,000 volumes from the 15th-21st centuries on a wide range of biodiversity subjects. These collections offer great resources to support distance learning.

All of our content can be accessed online for free and in full through our digital library portal at biodiversitylibrary.org. No login, account, or membership is required. You can also freely download anything in our library in a variety of formats. Our FAQ provides information on how to search the library and download content.

In addition to our general collections, we’ve identified a selection of materials that may be of particular interest to educators and students. Explore these resources below.

In 1868, one of the first serious botanical works in Canada was published. Entitled Canadian Wild Flowers, the work treated nearly three dozen of “the most remarkable” wildflowers found in Canada. The publication is notable for more than its position as an early work on Canadian botany. During a time when women were largely unwelcome in the male-dominated scientific world, this pioneering book was written and illustrated by women.

Canadian Wild Flowers was authored by naturalist Catharine Parr Traill (1802-99), a trailblazer in research on Canada’s natural history. The plates were drawn and lithographed by her niece, Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon Chamberlin (1833–1913). An expensive undertaking and sold by subscription, the work went on to be published in several editions.

“Catharine Parr Traill is arguably Canada’s most famous 19th century botanist, though she never thought of herself as a professional botanist because women weren’t employed as such in those days,” explains Dr. Dawn Bazely, University Professor in the Department of Biology at York University in Toronto.

On behalf of numerous partners and stakeholders, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) will convene a virtual workshop and international consultation in March and April 2020 with the aim of fleshing out a shared vision, road map and set of priorities for developing the scope, content and services included in a catalogue of the world’s natural history collections.

This workshop, Advancing the Catalogue of the World’s Natural History Collections, consists of two parts:

• A pair of two-hour preparatory webinars on 12-13 March 2020, in which participants will discuss this draft ideas paper;
• An open, facilitated online consultation that will run between 17-29 April 2020.

Visit the GBIF website to find more details, including times, dates and links to registration for both the March webinars and the April consultation.

Published in 1914, Butterflies of Australia by Gustavus Athol Waterhouse and George Lyell was the first comprehensive work on Australian butterflies to appear in Western scientific literature. It is a thick and rather chunky volume, with descriptions of 332 butterfly species, and was the product of many years of research. The copy held in Museums Victoria’s Rare Book Collection is even thicker than a standard issue, as it is bound with lined pages interleaved throughout. It is an author’s copy, owned and annotated by George Lyell.

At the end of the twentieth century, the The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and The Australian National Herbarium began collaboration on an ambitious project—to create an online index of names for all of the world’s vascular plants [1].

By combining the data in the nomenclatural indices of these three institutions—namely Index Kewensis, the Gray Card Index, and the Australian Plant Names Index—the collaboration created the International Plant Names Index (IPNI). Hosted by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, today the database includes over 1.6 million records. As part of the provided nomenclatural information, IPNI includes bibliographic details linked to scanned literature in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and links to taxonomic data through the Plants of the World Online.

Not surprisingly, given its role as a source of scanned literature for the Index, BHL is a vital resource for those working to build and maintain the IPNI database.

“I started working for the International Plant Names Index in 2013,” says Heather Lindon, Plant and Fungal Names Editor at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . “I need to be able to look up protologues—the original place of publication of plant names and their descriptions. If the earliest place of publication isn’t known, we can use the name search in BHL to try to find it. Since our modern naming system dates to 1753, BHL has a lot of relevant literature for my work. Also, the rules of the International Code of Nomenclature that govern plant names apply to names published in the past, so consulting older works is still relevant for names being published today.”

This Wikipedia Editing Workshop has been postponed for a later date. Please stay tuned – we will update when a new date is determined.

As a public health precaution, the Smithsonian is postponing or canceling all public events through May 3. See http://si.edu/events for details. Museums and the National Zoo remain open at this time. Smithsonian is monitoring the guidance of the CDC and local public health officials.