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William Brewster was a self-educated ornithologist who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From the mid-1800s until his death in 1919, he amassed a tremendous specimen collection and became one of the foremost experts on birds in the northeastern United States. In 1906, the Nuttall Ornithological Club published The Birds of the Cambridge Region of Massachusetts, Brewster’s exhaustive work on the avian fauna of his own backyard.

Every now and then an unusual and exciting opportunity arises to digitize a very unique item. Such an opportunity arrived in the email box of Doug Holland, the director of the Peter H. Raven Library at the Missouri Botanical Garden, one afternoon in January 2014. Anne Hess, daughter of artist Mary Barnas Pomeroy and grand-daughter of artist/teacher Carl Barnas, had decided to donate a collection of artwork and her mother’s unfinished manuscript to the library. It was with great honor that the Raven Library accepted this collection.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is committed to providing free and open access to over 500 years of natural history literature from across the globe. Towards that goal, the Library currently contains over 45 million pages of biodiversity content, representing over 155,000 volumes and 90,000 titles. However, hosting the content online is just part of our vision to “inspire discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge.” Users must be able to identify content relevant to their work and interest from amongst this vast corpus.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a founding Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, first proposed that the College create a medicinal plant garden in 1787. The garden would not only provide medicinals for use by physicians, but would also be used as a pedagogic resource for the training of medical students. Rush’s vision did not come to fruition until the College moved to its current site at 22nd and Ludlow Streets in 1909. An adjoining property was acquired in 1911, and a garden was planted in memory of Wharton Sinkler, a vice-president of the College. This garden contained flowers, trees, and shrubs, typical of small city parks. A medicinal plant garden was cultivated in place of the original garden 150 years after Dr. Rush first proposed its creation.

Systematics is the branch of biology concerned with classification and nomenclature. It is sometimes used synonymously with taxonomy. In their 1970 publication Systematics in Support of Biological Research, Michener et al. defined systematic biology and taxonomy as: Identifying species, their relationships and evolutionary hierarchies, is critical to saving biodiversity.

We are pleased to announce that the Smithsonian Libraries will be hosting a BHL intern this summer as part of its 2015 Professional Development Internship Program. These paid summer internships are six week-long opportunities for students in MLS or related graduate programs to gain valuable knowledge while working in the worlds’ largest museum library system!