Welcome to the Biodiversity Heritage Library Blog

In early February, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) hosted the EOL-BHL Research Sprint. NESCent, based in Durham, NC, is a non-profit science center supporting research in the evolutionary sciences. NESCent emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to research, and so the idea behind the Sprint was to put together teams of programmers and life scientists to expose each other to questions and ways of thinking that they might not necessarily consider in their normal work.

BHL member and affiliates met in New York City for the 2014 Annual Meeting (10-11 March 2014). The annual meeting is a chance for the leaders of BHL members and affiliates to learn what is happening around BHL and to give updates from their own institutions. This year, the meeting was held jointly by the New York Botanical Garden and the American Museum of Natural History. The first day of meetings was hosted by Susan Fraser, Director of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden.

  The 5th Global Biodiversity Heritage Library Meeting was held in Lorne, Australia, February 1-2, 2014.   Representatives from each of BHL’s global nodes, with the exception of BHL Egypt, convened to discuss the status of current goals, the formation of new goals, and to work together in forming the overall direction of BHL Global.  The meeting consisted of reports from the global nodes, the election of officers, and discussion of bylaws, technical issues and goals. The first day of the meeting consisted of presentations delivered by representatives from BHL Central and the Global Nodes. BHL Central Kicking off the presentations, Martin Kalfatovic, BHL Program Director, reported on BHL Central’s continued growth.

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.

BHL Australia and the Melbourne Museum hosted “BHL Day” at the museum on 31 January 2014. Representatives of all the global BHL nodes (with the exception of BHL Egypt) were in attendance. BHL members were joined by staff and volunteers from BHL Australia as well as from the Atlas of Living Australia. The day began with Caroline Martin, Bunjilaka Manager at the Melbourne Museum who welcomed the group with a traditional welcome from the indigenous people of Australia. Tim Hart, Acting CEO of the Melbourne Museum gave a welcome to the day’s events.

This is the final post of a joint blog series by the Field Book Project (FBP) and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), showcasing examples of digital connections between collectors, field book catalog records, and the resulting publications of collecting events. In 1878 the United States Congress was investigating rivalries between four surveys (Powell, Hayden, King, and Wheeler Surveys) that had been sent west to study the nation’s resources and search for a potential route for a railroad to the west coast. The investigation made it clear to Congress that the current system was not working.