Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from 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
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
  • 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 Featured Books

Blog Reel, Featured Books

American Daffodil Society Expands Access through BHL and ‘DaffLibrary’

Read the full blog post

The American Daffodil Society (ADS) is a group with international membership that has connected daffodil enthusiasts since its founding in 1954. In the spirit of National Gardening Month, we’re highlighting the ADS’ publication, The Daffodil Journal, which comes to BHL as part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project. Early volumes of this quarterly journal from 1964-1968 are currently available on BHL, with more volumes on the way.

Continue reading
April 19, 2018byElizabeth Meyer
Blog Reel, Featured Books

From ‘Shotgun Ornithology’ to Nature Conservation: Scientific Stories and Data from the Field Notes of William Brewster

Read the full blog post

William Brewster (1851-1919) was a renowned American amateur ornithologist, serving as a co-founder of the American Ornithologists’ Union, the first president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society, and a curator at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). As a part of the CLIR-funded BHL Field Notes Project, MCZ has been digitizing Brewster’s journals, diaries, letters, and photographic prints, which are held in Special Collections at the MCZ’s Ernst Mayr Library.

Continue reading
April 5, 2018byElizabeth Meyer
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Exploring the First American Silva

Read the full blog post

The North American Sylva is a beautiful scientifically and historically-significant work. Authored by François-André Michaux, it is the first American silva – a descriptive flora of forest trees. Published originally in French in 1810, the first English version appeared in 1817, and it was further enhanced with supplementary volumes by Thomas Nuttall in the 1840s.

Continue reading
March 29, 2018byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Exploring the Birds of Canada

Read the full blog post

Did someone say Spring?!

In Ottawa, we start to see the Canada Geese returning to their summer nesting grounds around this time of year. Large flocks of them fly overhead in the same v-shaped formations we saw months ago when they left in the late fall.​

Aren’t migratory birds fascinating? Along with so many other Canadian bird species.

Birds of Canada by Percy Algernon Taverner remains one of the best accounts of the kinds of birds that occur in Canada. And the first thirty-six pages holds just the right amount of information to open the science of ornithology to bird lovers, yet still enough information to satisfy research needs.​

Continue reading
March 22, 2018byElizabeth Smith
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Explore Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum on BHL

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University has contributed a century of their publications to BHL as a part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project, including: Bulletin of Popular Information (1915-1940) and Arnoldia (1942-2016). Nancy Rose, an arborist with a background in woody plant research and horticulture extension, served as Arnoldia’s editor from 2008 to February 2018. Before retiring, she shared with us some reflections on the their contributions to BHL.

Continue reading
March 21, 2018byElizabeth Meyer
Blog Reel, Featured Books

POBSP, how they did it : when science meets military interest

Read the full blog post

In the middle of the Cold War, the Smithsonian Institution embarked on the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program (POBSP) to survey U.S. territory islands and atolls dotting the central Pacific Ocean. From 1963 to 1969, researchers sought to inventory the plants and animals present on the islands, observe seasonal variations in numbers and reproduction, and the distribution of pelagic birds. Over the course of the survey, researchers observed approximately 150,000 pelagic birds at sea, banded 1,800,000 birds, and surveyed the flora and fauna of the islands, the most comprehensive study at the time. An incredible amount of data was collected during the POBSP, drastically increasing information available about the ecology of the small islands.

Continue reading
March 1, 2018byAdriana Marroquin
Blog Reel, Featured Books

When Writing in a 15th Century Rare Book is a Good Thing: Exploring the Incredible Marginalia in the Smithsonian’s Naturalis Historia

Read the full blog post

“Do your reading!” and “Don’t write in your books!” are two oft-echoed directions from schoolteachers. A 1491 edition of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, housed in the Smithsonian Libraries’ Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History and recently digitized for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, challenges both of those commands: not only did Pliny write it in such a way that doesn’t necessitate reading it cover to cover, but readers in centuries past have added notes, reactions, and even corrections to every page of the book!

Continue reading
February 22, 2018byAlexandra K. Alvis and Daniel Euphrat
Page 11 of 60« First...«10111213»203040...Last »

Featured Books

Learn more about some of the treasures in the Biodiversity Heritage Library in our Featured Books series.
Subscribe to Featured Books

Help Support BHL

BHL’s existence depends on the financial support of its patrons. Help us keep this free resource alive!

Donate Now

search

About BHL

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.”

Follow BHL

Join Our Mailing List

Sign up to receive the latest news, content highlights, and promotions.

Subscribe Now

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Subscribe to Blog Via RSS

Subscribe to the blog RSS feed to stay up-to-date on all the latest BHL posts.

Access RSS Feed

BHL on Twitter

Tweets by @BioDivLibrary

Inspiring Discovery through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library makes it easier than ever for you to access the information you need to study and explore life on Earth…for free, anytime, anywhere.

62+ Million Pages of
Biodiversity Literature Online.

EXPLORE

Tools and Services
to Transform Research.

EXPLORE

300,000+
Illustrations on Flickr.

EXPLORE

 

ABOUT | BLOG AUTHORS | HARMFUL CONTENT | PRIVACY | SITE MAP | TERMS OF USE

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader