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We are excited to announce that BHL has been named a joint-winner of the inaugural Digital Library Federation (DLF) 2016 Community/Capacity Award, along with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB)! During the month of June, DLF member organizations voted on an impressive list of 16 nominees to determine the award winner.

Over the past three months, BHL has welcomed three new Affiliates: Smithsonian Institution Archives, the Canadian Museum of Nature, and Národní Muzeum (National Museum, Prague). The BHL consortium now consists of sixteen Members and thirteen Affiliates.

The Smithsonian Institution Archives captures, preserves and makes available to the public the history of the Smithsonian since its inception in 1846.

Tuesday, June 12, 1866  A.M. pleasant P.M. cloudy. Studied part of P.M. Went to circus in evening & saw a hippopotamus for the first time. Got four warbling vireos before breakfast. The algebra is now rather hard.  (Diaries of William Brewster).  As a teen in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1860s, William Brewster (1851-1919) woke up early to collect birds before school, practiced taxidermy with friends, and carefully noted the dates when local plants flowered and produce ripened in the family garden. His early fascination for birds and his observant note-taking laid the groundwork for his career as a prominent amateur ornithologist.

A new and enhanced commenting system is being planned for BHL. The current commenting system will be disabled on July 5. In December 2015, we launched the ability to add comments to pages in BHL books.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), led by the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ), will host a National Digital Stewardship Residency (NDSR) cohort as part of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Entitled “Foundations to Actions: Extending Innovations in Digital Libraries in Partnership with NDSR Learners,” the program will include five geographically-distributed residents, all graduates of LIS or related master’s programs, in a collaborative project to improve tools, curation, and content stewardship at BHL.

Atlas des insectes, composé de 110 planches, représentant la plupart des insectes décrits dans le Manuel d’histoire naturelle et dans le Manuel d’entomologie [Translation: Atlas of insects, consisting of 110 plates, representing most of the insects described in the Natural History Manual and the Manual of Entomology] was digitized from the Library of Congress (LC)’s collection on May 1st, 2012 by the Internet Archive and included in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). One of the oldest publications scanned from the LC’s collections and added to BHL, this early natural history publication includes 110 plates of various insects.