Welcome to the Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog

The Art of Life: Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

On March 15-16, 2012, the BHL Institutional Council convened at the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University for their sixth annual meeting.* The BHL Institutional Council is composed of the directors of the BHL member libraries.

This week we’re excited to present a brand new BHL user. Dr. Nathalie Yonow just discovered BHL this year, and she has already used it to complete research for upcoming publications – research that, prior to BHL, took her a great deal of time, energy, and assistance from colleagues with access to large libraries. We are thrilled to hear from a user who is just discovering everything BHL has to offer.

In November, 2011, at the Life and Literature Conference in Chicago, IL, BHL announced the addition of its fourteenth consortium member, the United States Geological Survey Library.

If you’ve been following us on Twitter or checking in on our Facebook page, you know that this month is Women’s History Month. BHL is celebrating by highlighting women throughout history who have played in important role in the progression of biodiversity research and knowledge.

In 2008, following a discussion with a senior staff member within the Wikimedia Foundation, I began a test to “seed” or “plant” links from Wikipedia pages into our newly launched (at that time) Biodiversity Heritage Library web site.

As Collections Coordinator for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, I am the point person for all things collections related. I lead and organize the work of the BHL Collections Committee, process all scanning requests, manage the acquisition of new materials and handle our permissions agreement workflow.