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The Biodiversity Heritage Library participated in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility’s 23rd Governing Board meeting, 25-26 October 2016 in Brasilia, Brazil. I attended the meetings as the Head of Delegation for the BHL, substituting for Constance Rinaldo (Museum of Comparative Zoology/Harvard University). The two days of meetings brought together both the voting members (at the national level) and associate members (including the BHL). The meeting proved a fertile ground to meet with BHL users to discover new ways that the BHL can partner in the global biodiversity community.

Apparently, clergymen in the 16th century had a lot of extra time on their hands to masquerade as sea monsters and make their marks on the annals of natural history as sea monks and bishop fish. All this month, we’ve been exploring curious creatures in natural history as part of Page Frights. Today being Halloween, we thought we’d continue the fun by highlighting another “clergyman monster in disguise,” the bishop fish! Earlier this month, we highlighted the ‘sea monk,’ or Piscis monachi habitu (“Fish with the habit of a monk”), a specimen of which was reportedly caught in the seas between Sweden and Denmark in the 1540s.

Arachnophobia (the fear of spiders and other arachnids) is one of the most prevalent phobias in the world, and some estimates suggest that over 30.5% of people in the United States alone have a fear of arachnids (Health Research Funding 2014). Given the pervasiveness of this phobia, we thought it only appropriate to spend some time on the subject of spiders as part of our Page Frights celebration. Being the science-focused organization that we are, we decided to look at the topic of arachnids from a taxonomic point of view. The founding text on spider nomenclature is Svenska Spindlar. It was published in 1757 by Carl Clerck, a member of the Swedish nobility.

All over North America, there are organizations that study, preserve, and promote local flora.

BHL is excited to welcome Carolina Murcia, our new Product Development and Marketing Intern! Over her eight-month internship through the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, D.C., Carolina will conduct market research and create products and marketing materials for the BHL CafePress store.

Since the end of the twentieth century, the genus name Dixiphia has been associated with the white-crowned manakin. A recent investigation, made possible in part thanks to BHL, demonstrated that Dixiphia did not refer to a manakin at all, but was in fact a junior synonym of the white-headed marsh tyrant (genus Arundinicola). The white-crowned manakin was in need of its own, new genus-group name. The manakin mystery was first discovered by researchers Guilherme Renzo Rocha Brito and Guy M. Kirwan. Following the publication of a book on Cotingas and Manakins, Brito and Kirwan received an inquiry from James A.