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The Hispaniolan solenodon is a unique, and at first glance somewhat peculiar, animal. Even its scientific name conveys the unusualness of the species — Solenodon paradoxus.

One of two extant solenodon species (the other being the Cuban solenodon), the Hispaniolan solenodon is found only in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It, like its Cuban counterpart, is endangered.

As members of the mammalian Order Eulipotyphla, which includes insectivores such as shrews, hedgehogs, and moles, solenodons diverged from all other living mammals over 70 million years ago. They are only found in the Caribbean, making them an important priority for the conservation of evolutionary diversity. This long history means that they have survived countless extinction events and only today are threatened.

Dr. Alexis Mychajliw (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County) has been studying the Hispaniolan solenodon as part of her research on Caribbean mammals for more than five years. Much of her work has focused on flipping the narrative of the Hispaniolan solenodon from endangered weirdo to resilient survivor.

Insects trapped in amber. For anyone who has seen Jurassic Park, this description immediately conjures up familiar imagery. In the movie, such a fortuitously-preserved mosquito provided the means to bring dinosaurs back to life. While that may be the realm of science fiction, in the realm of science, such amber time capsules are still a valuable window into the past, allowing scientists today to examine ancient specimens and, sometimes, discover new species.

In the mid-nineteenth century, microscopy became immensely popular with European and American naturalists. As microscopes became more affordable, microscopy societies were established, and numerous microscopy journals were launched and widely distributed. Many microscopy publications were richly illustrated, trying to recreate the “world of wonder and beauty” seen through the microscope.

To this day, so many nineteenth-century publications on microscopy remain that they can hardly be analyzed by just a handful of historians. Therefore, the MUSTS research group at Maastricht University launched Worlds of Wonder, an online crowdsourcing project, on the Zooniverse citizen science platform. The MUSTS researchers behind Worlds of Wonder, Lea Beiermann, Cyrus Mody and Raf De Bont, ask citizen scientists to help them classify nineteenth-century microscopy illustrations, assign keywords to the illustrations to make them searchable, and identify the people who made them.

There are more described species of beetles (order Coleoptera) than any other group of organisms on the planet. With over 350,000 described extant and extinct species and subspecies, beetles represent about 40% of all described arthropods and about 25% of all described species.

One of the myriad families of beetles is Monotomidae, with over 250 described species [3]. Commonly called minute clubbed beetles, the family includes such species as Europs frontalis (found primarily in the tropics) and Pycnotomina cavicolle (found exclusively in forested regions of eastern North America).

Dr. Thomas McElrath, Insect Collections Manager at the Illinois Natural History Survey, has been studying the systematics of Coleoptera for nine years. He is currently working on compiling a worldwide checklist of the Monotomidae. The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a crucial resource for his research on this project.

Nearly 120 years ago Emma Jane Cole (1901) published Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Surprisingly, this botanical account published in 1901 for the Grand Rapids area remains the most recent comprehensive treatment of the plants specific to our region. And we still use it!

Like many taxonomists, I like to group things together and sort them: specimens into species, species into genera, references into bibliographies, images into galleries. The Biodiversity Heritage Library has been a powerful enabler for me as a grouper-sorter.

Fifteen or so years ago, a literature search still required at least one long and expensive trip from my home town in regional Tasmania to an academic library in Hobart (Tasmania’s capital city), or in Melbourne or Canberra on the Australian mainland. Reams of paper were used to make photocopies of key references that I could take home with me. Weeks were spent waiting for additional photocopies to arrive through inter-library loans. When I finally had all the relevant older references, I could do my revisionary taxonomic work.

Then BHL appeared.

For the past 10 years, almost all the older literature I need to see has been accessed through BHL — quickly, cheaply and paperlessly.

Vanity, an art installation by Joseph Gregory Rossano created for and with the support of the Museum of Glass (MOG) in Tacoma, Washington, tells the story of eleven species and subspecies, presumed extinct, presented through the lens of humanity’s role in their demise. The exhibition features historical accounts detailing each species’ “discovery” (collection date, type locality, collector, scientific illustrations, etc.), humanity’s role in its extinction, and the year it was declared “Extinct”. To produce these species tales, Rossano collaborated with Sandra I. Berríos-Torres, MD. Berríos-Torres served as author of the 11 historical accounts and as Editorial Director of the exhibition catalogue, on behalf of Joseph Gregory Rossano.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library was a crucial resource for Berríos-Torres. Consulting dozens of publications in BHL while conducting research for Vanity, she ultimately cited 16 of them in the historical accounts that were incorporated into the exhibition and catalogue.