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News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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    Fossil Stories
    Garden Stories
    Monsters Are Real
    Page Frights
    Her Natural History
    Earth Optimism 2020
Tech Blog
Visit BHL
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts in Blog Reel

Blog Reel, User Stories

Vanity and BHL: Examining Extinction and Rediscovery through Art

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Vanity, an art installation by Joseph Gregory Rossano created for and with the support of the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington, tells the story of eleven species and subspecies, presumed extinct, presented through the lens of humanity’s role in their demise. The exhibition features historical accounts detailing each species’ “discovery” (collection date, type locality, collector, scientific illustrations, etc.), humanity’s role in its extinction, and the year it was declared “Extinct”. To produce these species tales, Rossano collaborated with Sandra I. Berríos-Torres, MD. Berríos-Torres served as author of the 11 historical accounts and as Editorial Director of the exhibition catalogue, on behalf of Joseph Gregory Rossano.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library was a crucial resource for Berríos-Torres. Consulting dozens of publications in BHL while conducting research for Vanity, she ultimately cited 16 of them in the historical accounts that were incorporated into the exhibition and catalogue.

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February 7, 2019byGrace Costantino and Sandra I. Berríos Torres, MD
BHL News, Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

Join us for a Women in Natural History Wikipedia Editing Workshop on 13 March!

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Help us enhance information in Wikipedia about women in natural history during our Wikipedia Editing Workshop on 13 March in celebration of Women’s History Month!

In collaboration with Smithsonian Libraries and with support from Wikimedia DC, we’ll be hosting a Wikipedia Editing Workshop from 10am-2pm ET on 13 March to improve and create Wikipedia articles related to women in natural history. The workshop will be hosted by the Smithsonian Libraries in the National Museum of Natural History Library. There will also be virtual participation options. Registration is required.

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February 4, 2019byGrace Costantino
BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL and WikiCite 2018

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In November 2018, Diane Shaw, Katie Mika and Siobhan Leachman attended WikiCite 2018 in Berkeley, CA. WikiCite is a Wikimedia initiative that aims to develop a database of open citations and linked bibliographic data.

Katie, a former BHL National Digital Stewardship Resident from Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Siobhan, a citizen scientist and linked open data champion from New Zealand who has been a devoted transcriber of natural history materials in the Smithsonian Transcription Center, gave a talk on WikiCite and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. They described some of the unique challenges for heritage literature and metadata, and demonstrated how open access citations, images, and details gleaned from BHL and other open natural history digital repositories are applied to Wikimedia Foundation projects to support essential documentation of scientists, literature, and rare and endemic species.

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January 31, 2019bySiobhan Leachman, Diane Shaw and Katherine Mika
Blog Reel, Featured Books

The Orchidaceous Plants of Franz Bauer and John Lindley

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Two of the most important early contributors to our understanding of orchids were the artist Franz Bauer (1758-1840) and the English botanist and gardener John Lindley (1799-1865), who was to become known as the “father of modern orchidology”. The publication of the Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants [from sketches prepared between 1792 and 1832] between 1830 and 1838 combined Bauer’s great skill and Lindley’s knowledge and industriousness to produce an invaluable artistic and scientific work. The Natural History Museum, London (NHM) has recently uploaded their copy of this volume to sit alongside the Missouri Botanical Gardens’ own volume.

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December 19, 2018byBen Nathan
Blog Reel, User Stories

A Book’s Eight Year Journey to the Biodiversity Heritage Library: Fulfilling a Researcher’s Digitization Request and Advancing Science

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As an early work in the history of Linnaean taxonomy, Beredeneerde catalogus van eene, by uitstek fraaye en weergaalooze verzameling, zoo van inlandsche als uitheemsche vogelen, viervoetige en gekorvene dieren (i.e. Vroeg’s Catalogue, 1764) by Adrian Vroeg is the source of dozens of new species of birds. Published just six years after the 10th edition of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae — considered the starting point of zoological nomenclature — the work is extremely rare, with only a handful of copies known to exist worldwide.

Because of the work’s age and rarity, first-hand access to the title has been difficult, and many researchers have had to rely on secondary sources for Vroeg’s names, which may have introduced errors or even overlooked the priority of a name established by Vroeg.

“It is absolutely rare that the scientific community gets access to such an early work in which new names were established after 1758,” explains Dr. Francisco Welter-Schultes of the Zoological Institute of Göttingen University in Germany. “Imagine being able to finally view an original spelling of a name that might not have been verified for more than 100 years. Generations of scientists never reliably saw the correct spellings of these names.”

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December 13, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Labillardière and the Botany of the Levant

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At the end of the 18th century, French naturalist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière spent two years exploring and collecting plants in the Levant. The expedition ultimately resulted in the publication of a beautifully-illustrated work on the botany of the region, Icones plantarum Syriæ rariorum (“Rare Syrian Plant Images”).

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December 6, 2018byGrace Costantino
BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL at the GBIF 25th Governing Board Annual Meeting

As Chair of BHL, I had the privilege of attending the 25th Meeting of the GBIF Global Governing Board convened in Kilkenny, Ireland, 15-18 October 2018. I represent BHL in its capacity as an Associate Participant in GBIF at the governing board meeting. BHL has been a participant since 2014.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) operates through a network of global nodes to develop and maintain an open data infrastructure for sharing digital biodiversity data.

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November 27, 2018byConstance Rinaldo
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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