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Happy Valentine’s Day! We couldn’t think of a better day to feature devoted couple and colleagues Dr. Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti and their work on the PLANT project.

This week, we feature a colleague who combs the botanical literature for new plant names, determines their validity and contributes them to the International Plant Name Index (IPNI). Meet Dr. Kanchi Gandhi, who has been recognized by the American Association of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) for his countless pieces of nomenclatural advice provided to taxonomists worldwide and for keeping classical expertise in the practice of taxonomy alive.

This week, we feature a rare plant botanist for the California Native Plant Society whose first words after discovering BHL for the first time were “this is amazing!” We thrive on these incredible moments of serendipitous discovery we so often hear about from our users, and we’re proud to share one of them with you today in our feature on botanist Aaron Sims!

Ever wondered how BHL decides what to scan? There are a variety of avenues that staff use to select titles for digitization, including scan requests submitted by users, BHL member publications and subject strengths, botany and zoology priority titles, in-copyright titles for which BHL has received permission to scan, and titles identified by BHL staff members as important biodiversity works.

After a short break during which we featured various posts related to the Life and Literature conference, we again resume our BHL and Our User series, kicking things off again with Dr. Thomas Carefoot, a marine biologist and the author of the delightful educational website on west-coast marine invertebrates, A Snail’s Odyssey.

Today we feature the last 4 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. We hope you’ve enjoyed this opportunity to see what those present at the conference had to say about it and BHL. You can see these and all other interviews on the Life and Literature website.

Continuing with our theme, here are the next 4 of 17 conference attendee interviews from the Life and Literature conference. The first three feature recipients of the JRS African digitization scholarship, which funded the expenses of nine visitors from Africa to both attend the conference and an additional meeting on Wednesday (Nov. 16th) with the express purpose of discussing biodiversity literature digitization in Africa (expect more information on this meeting in a future post). The fourth interview is that of Dr. Jinzhong Cui, the director of BHL-China. All interviews are available on the Life and Literature website.