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Since July 2016, the papers of taxonomic botanist John Torrey (1796-1873) have been the focus of a digitization and crowdsourced transcription project at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Digitizing and Transcribing the John Torrey Papers, organized in coordination with the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was created in an effort to digitize and make virtually accessible the correspondence of John Torrey and his colleagues, specifically letters received by Dr. Torrey.

At the Long Night of the Museums on 31 August 2019, the library of the Museum für Naturkunde presented its digitisation activities around a current project to index its Drory Library. In addition to particularly impressive books from the collection, which are already accessible in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, two books were digitised which were not yet available in BHL.

The family Syrphidae, commonly called hover flies or flower flies, include some 6,000 living species. As “one of the most abundant groups of flower visiting insects”, with adults of most species feeding almost exclusively on pollen and nectar or honeydew, these flies are among the most important pollinators, both for wild plants and numerous crops.

The multi-volume Diptères exotiques nouveaux ou peu connus (1838-[43]) by Justin Macquart contains the first descriptions of numerous Diptera species, including many members of the Syrphidae. Systema Dipterorum, the biosystematic database of world Diptera, attributes 430 Syrphidae names to Macquart.

“Macquart wrote so many early Syrphidae genus and species descriptions that it’s almost impossible to write a syrphid taxonomic paper without referencing this title at some point,” explains Dr. Andrew D. Young.

Young is a University of California, Davis postdoc, working out of the California Department of Food and Agriculture Plant Pest Diagnostics Center, where he specializes in Diptera taxonomy and phylogenetics. Although he studies Tephritidae (fruit flies) in his current position, most of Young’s entomological training has been focused on Syrphidae. While Macquart’s monographic series is an essential resource for this group, it’s not easy to come by.

“Each volume is several hundred pages, and was published in the mid 1800s, so hardcopies are not particularly easy to get ahold of,” explains Young. “Most of the time when you do find a hardcopy, it’s one that’s been photocopied so many times it’s barely legible.”

Fortunately, Diptères exotiques nouveaux ou peu connus is freely available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).

My name is Meredith Wray, and I had the wonderful opportunity to serve as a Biodiversity Heritage Library digital content intern this summer.

First off, a little bit about myself. I am from Richmond, VA and obtained my undergraduate degree in American Studies from William & Mary. I am working to achieve my master’s in library and information science from Rutgers University, with a concentration in archives and preservation. I am extremely interested in the work of digital libraries and archives. My program is remote, so I was very excited to find a learning opportunity like the BHL internship in which I could expand my librarian skill set and apply my coursework to the goals of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The remote nature of the internship allowed for a flexible work schedule on my part as I balance coursework and my job.

Twitter is a popular communication channel amongst the scientific community. Scientists use the platform to communicate with colleagues and share their research findings with both other scientists and the public.

Twitter may also be a valuable source of data for researchers. For example, ecologists from the University of Gloucestershire found that “Twitter-mined” data is useful for phenological studies, such as winged-ant emergence or the appearance of house spiders in the fall.

Twitter conversations can also spark unexpected discoveries. For example, a recent @BioDivLibrary Twitter conversation helped uncover a connection between the scientific literature and a museum’s collections.

The BHL website was recently updated for new fields to download content. The TSV Data Exports are being updated to mirror this change. Please review these changes if you rely on the field order instead of the field names of the TSV file.

Two new fossil fly species have been named in honor of the Smithsonian Libraries and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Sylvicola silibrarius Greenwalt, 2019 and Kishenehnoasilus bhl Dikow, 2019 have been described from specimens collected from the 46-million-year-old Kishenehn Formation of northwestern Montana. The species were published last week in the open access journal Palaeontologia Electronica.