The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to welcome the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) as a new Member. As BHL’s 17th Member, MNHN will expand the breadth of BHL’s collection and service to the global scientific community.

The Muséum’s membership came into effect at a ceremony in Paris at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle on 2 December 2016. During the ceremony, Dr. Bruno David, President of the Muséum, signed a certificate of membership on behalf of MNHN, and Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn, Chair of the BHL Members’ Council and Director of Smithsonian Libraries, co-signed the certificate on behalf of the BHL consortium.

Ceremony and Certificate of Membership Signing at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle on 2 December 2016. From left to right: Dr. Bruno David (President of the Muséum), Martin R. Kalfatovic (BHL Program Director), Laurence Bénichou (Head and Publications Manager, Museum Science Press, MNHN), Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn (Chair of the BHL Members’ Council and Director of Smithsonian Libraries), Gildas Illien (Director of Libraries and Documentation, MNHN). Image copyright: MNHN – JC Domenech.

Established in 1793, “le Muséum” – as it is simply known in France – is the national natural history Museum of France. The MNHN Library holds more than 2 million items reflecting the vast spectrum of the Muséum’s research activities. The library has been digitizing its collections for well over a decade, often in connection with European and international digital collaborations including BHL Europe. Over 500,000 pages of primarily natural science literature have been digitized to date.

“The Muséum is committed to facilitating its global service to research by developing international partnerships and enhancing its digital strategies. It has invested significant effort and resources into developing a comprehensive digitization program,” asserts Dr. Bruno David, President of the MNHN. “BHL has become a standard resource for natural scientists around the world and it provides services that are extremely popular within our own research communities in France. Participation in BHL will allow us to increase the visibility of our collections, contribute to the international dissemination of taxonomic research, and participate in a global effort to promote open access, open science, and open data.”

As a BHL Member, MNHN will enhance BHL’s collection by contributing rare and unique material from the Muséum’s library, including the entire collection of MNHN scientific publications from 1802 to 2000. (Materials published after 2000 are available through other portals.) The library will also contribute to the expansion of global collection development strategies and facilitate partnerships with other institutions in France and throughout Europe.

“We have had a relationship with Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle for many years through BHL Europe, and this year we are excited to see that relationship expand through membership,” affirms BHL Program Director Martin R. Kalfatovic. “For the past decade, we have been working diligently to build global partnerships that allow us to enhance the comprehensiveness of our collections and support research across the globe. We look forward to working with our MNHN colleagues to increase our impact on the European and international research communities.”

Explore the full BHL consortium here.

Over the past three months, BHL has welcomed two new European Affiliates: Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire – Lausanne in Switzerland and the Mendel Museum of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. The BHL consortium now consists of sixteen Members and fifteen Affiliates.

Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire – Lausanne

Founded in the 16th century, the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire – Lausanne is one of the largest public and university libraries in Switzerland. The library contains approximately 2.5 million printed documents, representing academic, cultural heritage, general and special collections. The library also engages in a variety of digital initiatives, including a large-scale newspaper digitization project, various on-demand digitization services, and collaborative projects with regional libraries. Furthermore, in collaboration with Google Books, BCU Lausanne digitized over 106,000 volumes from its collection.

Through participation in BHL, BCU Lausanne will build upon current digitization efforts and further its commitment to providing free access to its library collections. The institution also hopes to leverage its existing partnerships within the regional library network in order to facilitate the inclusion of library collections from other institutions within Switzerland.

Mendel Museum of Masaryk University

Mendel Museum, which has been a department of Masaryk University in Brno (in the Czech Republic) since 2007, is dedicated to spreading the scientific legacy of the Augustinian abbot Gregor Johann Mendel. Mendel is renowned as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Additionally, the museum also promotes the wide range of scientific disciplines that Masaryk University students may encounter. Through interactive exhibits on Mendel’s legacy to internationally-recognized Mendel Lectures, the museum provides a place for the public to appreciate the connection of science with practice.

Mendel Museum holds a collection of Gregor Johann Mendel’s manuscripts, which are owned by the Augustinians in Brno and have never before been available online. These documents represent important scientific and cultural heritage materials and provide a unique perspective into the foundations of modern genetics. Participation in BHL will allow Mendel Museum to provide free and open access to this incredibly rich and valuable collection.

The Internet Archive, a non-profit institution based in San Francisco and long-time BHL partner in digitization efforts, and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, one of the world’s premier natural history museums, based in Leiden, The Netherlands, have joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library as Affiliates. These new partnerships will allow BHL to expand the breadth and depth of its online collection and strengthen the consortium’s technical expertise. The BHL consortium now consists of ten Affiliates and fifteen Members.

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive (IA) was founded in 1996 with the mission to provide “Universal access to all Knowledge.” The organization seeks to preserve our shared cultural heritage and to provide open access to our cultural artifacts in the digital era, supporting the work of historians, scholars, journalists, students, the blind and reading disabled, as well as the general public. The Internet Archive’s digital collections include more than 460 billion Web captures, moving images (2.2 M videos and films), audio (2.5 M recordings, 140k concerts), texts (8M texts and digital books), software (100,000 items) and television (3M hours). It has created new models for digital conservation by forging alliances with more than 400 libraries, universities and national archives around the world. IA employs approximately 150 staff worldwide, including those scanning books in 30 centers in 4 continents, with expertise in a wide variety of areas including digitization, technical development, large scale storage, web archiving, collection management, fundraising, and public outreach, particularly in the policy realm.

The Internet Archive has been partnering with BHL on digitization and technical activities for over a decade. IA’s scanning technology was the basis for BHL scanning starting in 2006. IA also built and manages the underlying technical infrastructure that delivers and stores the BHL content. BHL was also the proud recipient of the Internet Archive’s Internet Heroes award in 2015.

Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive headquarters in San Francisco, CA.

“This move to Affiliate status formalizes a relationship that stretches back over ten years,” emphasized Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive Founder and Digital Librarian. “The Internet Archive was built through the collaboration of people and institutions from all around the world. One of the earliest library consortia to partner with IA was the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Through its collaboration with the BHL, IA maintains a strong interest in biodiversity, but the key benefits to both organizations in the Archive’s joining BHL as an Affiliate will be in the areas of technology, collaborative grants, building new partnerships, and advocacy for open content.”

The Naturalis Biodiversity Center

The Library of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center is of national importance, holding approximately 350,000 books, journals, rare books, drawings and a variety of archival material. The library collection of the Dutch Entomological Society is also incorporated. For almost 200 years, collection concentrations have been linked to Naturalis’ research themes. Through its affiliation, Naturalis will enhance the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s current corpus of over 48 million pages through the contribution of titles not yet found within BHL’s collection.

“I am very pleased that we now can share our digitized library collection in BHL,” stated Caroline Pepermans, Head of Library Collections at Naturalis. “In our domain BHL is ‘the’ global repository of legacy biodiversity literature. Our affiliation fits very well with our strategic goals of sharing knowledge, resources and data. We are excited to participate in such an innovative consortium as BHL.”

We are pleased to announce the release of two new BHL online exhibitions: Early Women in Science and Latino Natural History.

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Women’s Committee awarded a one-year grant to Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) to build online exhibitions to showcase the scientific and historical contributions of Women and Latino naturalists and illustrators. The project, entitled Notable Women and Latinos in Natural History, draws from content in BHL and uses the Biodiversity Library Exhibition (BLE) platform developed by BHL Europe.

The exhibitions include factoids, highlights, stories, illustrations and publications from some of natural history’s most remarkable women and Latino naturalists. Some of the featured individuals, such as Maria Sibylla Merian and Louis A. Fuertes, are internationally celebrated. Others, though perhaps less famous, are equally important contributors to the world of science.

Illustration by Louis A. Fuertes from The Game Birds of California (1819). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8991919.

Below we present a few highlights about the men and women featured in the exhibits, extracted from the fascinating content written and curated by exhibition creators Adriana Marroquin (Latino Natural History) and Laurel Byrnes (Early Women in Science). Stay tuned for future posts from Adriana and Laurel showcasing some of their favorite stories and content (akin to Adriana’s earlier post on the extraordinary naturalist and illustrator Louis A. Fuertes). Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more exciting tidbits, and be sure to check out the exhibitions today!

Selected highlights from Early Women in Science

• Mary Agnes Chase (1869-1963), a self-taught botanist awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Illinois at age eighty-nine, served as botanical illustrator for the USDA Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington, D.C. and increased the world’s knowledge of Brazilian grasses by at least 10 percent.
• Edith Patch (1876-1954), the first female head of the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station, predicted in 1936 that, should heavy use of pesticides continue, bird species and insect pollinators would be dying out by the year 2000.
• Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) was a pioneer in the field of landscaping, designing over 400 gardens in her lifetime and serving as one of the most influential people in the Arts and Crafts movement. Her younger brother inspired the name of Stevenson’s protagonist in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
• Mary Treat (1830-1923) notably corrected Charles Darwin, with whom she shared an interest in carnivorous plants, about the mechanism by which bladderworts capture insects. Darwin acknowledged that she was correct, stating, “Mrs. Treat of New Jersy [sic] has been more successful than any other observer” in comprehending the way in which bladderworts (Utricularia clandestina) capture insects.

Photograph from Gertrude Jekyll’s Lilies for English Gardens (1901). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/33478387.

 

Illustration from Felipe Poey’s Memorias sobre la historia natural de la isla de Cuba, acompañadas de sumarios latinos y extractos en frances (1851-58). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2525313.