Welcome to the Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog

Please join the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the Smithsonian Libraries, and the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for a twitterchat on September 2nd, 2014. The chat will take place between 2-3 pm (EST) and feature Helen James, Curator of Birds and our recent Once There Were Billions exhibit in NMNH, and Martin Kalfatovic, BHL Program Director. This September marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the very last passenger pigeon, Martha.

As part of our BHL & Our Users series, we recently interviewed Denis Lepage, Senior Scientist at the National Data Center, Bird Studies Canada and creator of Avibase, an impressive online resource on the birds of the world.

The BHL and Encylopedia of Life (EOL) share the vision of open access to knowledge about life on earth. BHL works to achieve this goal by providing open access to biodiversity literature. EOL tackles this challenge by gathering, generating, and sharing biodiversity knowledge in an open, freely accessible digital repository. BHL and EOL have been collaborating since 2007, sharing content, best practices, and expertise. Both websites are also extensively interlinked. Taxa identified on pages in BHL are linked to the corresponding species page in EOL.

It’s that time of year again! That special week set aside to celebrate the fabulously diverse Selachimorpha clade: Shark Week! If you were to ask an average person to differentiate between a tiger shark, Great White, whale shark, bull shark, or mako, most could probably do so, or would at least be aware that such varieties existed. This wasn’t always the case.

Since it’s initial organization in 2012 and launch in 2013, BHL Africa has been hard at work developing a strategy, framework, and methodology for contributing the valuable biodiversity information held within the node’s participating institutions to BHL.

The North American Regional Node Meeting of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) occurred in Ontario, Canada on July 21-22, 2014. The meeting, themed “Advancing Informatics, Engagement and Content,” focused on progress updates and ongoing implementation tactics for the North American regional strategy. Discussions included the use of digital object identifiers (DOIs), collections and specimens in the GBIF context, organizational structure, and membership in both GBIF and the North American node.