All posts tagged with bhl

Once an amazing diversity of birds–some in breathtaking abundance–inhabited the vast forests and plains of North America. But starting around 1600, some species began to disappear, as humans altered habitats, over-hunted, and introduced predators. A notable extinction occurred 100 years ago, with the death of Martha the Passenger Pigeon, the last member of a species that once filled America’s skies.

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.

  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.

It’s no secret that the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a top-notch resource for legacy biodiversity publications. The current U.S. copyright law states that if a title was published over 90 years ago, that title has entered the public domain and is out of copyright. This allows the BHL to digitize and provide access to an astounding number of volumes published before 1923. However, that 1923 cut-off isn’t the end-all, be-all for BHL. An often overlooked aspect of the portal is that it provides access to several post-1922 titles.

As part of BHL’s Winter Appeal, we’ll be highlighting some of the amazing species that are especially well-adapted to cold, wintery climes as well as those that often come to mind as we celebrate the winter holidays.  Each post will include images, facts and sometimes even stories drawn from the pages of the open access literature in BHL.  The ongoing growth of BHL is supported in part by our dedicated patrons whose gifts we depend on for the the digitization of additional literature, technical development of the program, and improvement of data curation.

We’re pleased to announce that the Biodiversity Heritage Library is profiled in Searching for Sustainability: Strategies from Eight Digitized Special Collections, a major study funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and conducted by Ithaka S+R in partnership with the Association of Research Libraries.

This summer, the Library of Congress hosted five-day Summer Teacher Institutes in Washington, DC. As part of the most recent Institute, BHL shared an exhibit table on Science and Technology with the Library of Congress on Tuesday, August 6, 2013. Carolyn Sheffield, of the Smithsonian Institution, shared information on BHL and distributed stickers, pins, and BHL business cards—complete with gorgeous illustrations from BHL.