All posts in User Stories

As part of our regular BHL & Our Users series, Connie Rinaldo (MCZ Librarian and BHL Executive Committee Member) recently caught up with Cam Webb, a Senior Research Scientist at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.  We were very pleased to hear about how he has been exploring BHL and what he discovered.

New Zealand is an exciting place to study biodiversity for a number of reasons. First, its unique set of plants and animals, evolving in the context of an active geologic history, results in several model systems that are ideal for testing ideas about how evolution works. Second, the country still has areas of its natural environment that are relatively undisturbed, something of which the wider public is very proud and which means that many people are interested in and aware of many native species.

As part of our BHL & Our Users series, we recently caught up with Dr. Roberta Cowan, a specialist in Phycology (taxonomy) and information management. Over the last 19 years, Dr. Cowan has been actively involved in nomenclatural work, notably for Australian algal species.  Dr. Cowan was kind enough to provide some background on her work and the role BHL has played in making that work both quicker and easier over the years. Roberta Cowan, PhD  In the 1980s a number of countries had nomenclatural plant databases.

As part of our regular BHL and Our Users series, we’re pleased to introduce Dr. Karen James, staff scientist at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL). Karen holds a PhD in genetics and has worked in her field for 11 years since receiving her degree. About seven years ago, her interests began shifting towards biodiversity and citizen science applications and she has graciously agreed to answer some questions about how BHL has impacted that work.

As part of our regular BHL and Our Users series, we’re pleased to introduce Barna Páll-Gergely, a PhD student in the Department of Biology at Shinshu University in Japan. Barna has had a lifelong interest in shells and land snails and has graciously agreed to answer some questions about how BHL has impacted his research.

Today, we present an example of how BHL is being utilized to expand an award-winning database on the insect order Lepidoptera!  Generic Names of Moths of the World: Generic Names and their Type-species by Brian Pitkin and Paul Jenkins is a catalogue of more than 32,000 genus-group names of the insect order Lepidoptera. First launched in July 2004, the site was awarded the Podalirius Star in November 2004.