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Dr. Gregory Peck, an Assistant Professor in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, has been assessing a large number of apple genotypes for their potential use in hard cider production. Through this work, he has discovered inconsistencies between many U.S. varieties and their original counterparts. He recently teamed up with Dr. Gayle Volk at the United States Department of Agriculture to uncover the truth behind these enigmatic cultivars.

“We employed DNA fingerprinting tools to confirm our suspicions that these were misnamed cultivars,” explains Peck. “But now we’re left with a mystery. What are the misidentified cultivars?”

As it turns out, it’s a mystery that the Biodiversity Heritage Library can help solve.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to welcome the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN) as a new Member. MfN is the first German museum to join the Biodiversity Heritage Library as a Member.

The National Agricultural Library (NAL), Special Collections has one of the world’s largest collections of nursery and seed trade catalogs totaling over 200,000 from American as well as international companies. This collection, representing businesses located in all states plus over 50 countries, was named after its long-time curator, Henry G. Gilbert. The earliest catalog is from William R. Prince & Company dated 1771. NAL continues to collect modern-day catalogs.

Animal Keepers’ Forum, first published by the American Association of Zookeepers in 1974, set out to solve a problem: animal care and conservation requires specialized knowledge, but institutions were limited in their ability to share experience with each other. Animal Keepers’ Forum has connected animal care professionals for the past 44 years, and serves as both a current resource for husbandry best practices and a historical record of conservation efforts.

Now it’s openly accessible on the Biodiversity Heritage Library as part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Thanks to permission from the American Association of Zookeepers, Smithsonian Libraries has digitized the complete run of volumes from 1974 through the present, with a 2-year embargo period.

Graduate student Otto Stenberg has experienced the value of historical literature, and the benefits of BHL, first-hand throughout his studies on molecular and evolutionary biology at the University of Helsinki. One of these most memorable instances occurred during an undergraduate research project on pinniped evolution.

We’re thrilled to announce that full text search is now available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library!

With this new functionality, search results in the library will display hits for your term in both the bibliographic information (i.e. title, author, subject, publisher, related titles and series, etc.) as well as the full text of books in BHL.

Henry Weed Fowler must have loved fish.

Ichthyology dominated his entire career. He started as a museum assistant at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1903. Other experts in his field soon recognized his prolific skill. In 1918, an assistant curator at the Smithsonian, Barton A. Bean, reached out to Fowler (then still an assistant) for help identifying fishes collected by the United States Exploring Expedition. Fowler dove into the work. He delivered a lengthy 750-page manuscript in two years, helping to discover 18 new species of fish in the process.

For reference, the average field book here at the Smithsonian Institution Archives is 110 pages.