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Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
  • Visit BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with book-of-the-month

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Notes accompanying collection of useful plants made by W. J. Fisher at [Kodiak] in 1899

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In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we would like to highlight a field book that documents Native American knowledge of natural resources. The field book was created by William J. Fisher, who lived in southern Alaska from 1879 until his death in 1903. Fisher’s notebook documents his final years collecting and looks at the relationship between the Alutiiq (Aleut) and their plants by recording medicinal and food uses for 48 specimens.
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November 22, 2016byLesley Parilla
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Page Frights

Arachnophobes Beware! The Birth of Spider Nomenclature Just in Time for Halloween!

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Arachnophobia (the fear of spiders and other arachnids) is one of the most prevalent phobias in the world, and some estimates suggest that over 30.5% of people in the United States alone have a fear of arachnids (Health Research Funding 2014). Given the pervasiveness of this phobia, we thought it only appropriate to spend some time on the subject of spiders as part of our Page Frights celebration. Being the science-focused organization that we are, we decided to look at the topic of arachnids from a taxonomic point of view. The founding text on spider nomenclature is Svenska Spindlar. It was published in 1757 by Carl Clerck, a member of the Swedish nobility.
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October 27, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Jesús Sánchez’s Mexican Medical Zoology

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Sánchez, Jesús. Datos para la zoología médica mexicana: arácnidos é insectos. México: Oficina Tipográfica de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1893.
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September 22, 2016byMinerva Castro Escamilla
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Catesby’s Magnificent Natural History, In Three Editions

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In May of 1729, the first part of the first fully illustrated book on the flora and fauna of North America was presented to the Royal Society. Upon the conclusion of the work, Royal Society Secretary Cromwell Mortimer praised it as “the most magnificent Work I know of, since the Art of Printing has been discovered” (Nelson and Elliott, 165). The work was The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, and all told it was issued in eleven parts (including an appendix) over an eighteen year period (from 1729-1747).
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September 1, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

The National Park Service, Historic Surveys, and the Hunt for Documentation

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This year is the National Park Service’s Centennial anniversary. In recognition, we thought we would take a look at one of the geological surveys that inspired the founding of Yellowstone National Park. In recent months, researchers in increasing numbers have looked for specimens and field documentation relating to Yellowstone, specifically from the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. This survey is important for a number of reasons. It was the first federally funded survey, and was instrumental in introducing the American public to Yellowstone’s natural wonders. It inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872. Smithsonian is a repository for specimens and documentation from the Hayden Geological Survey and numerous others relating to the U.S.

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August 25, 2016byLesley Parilla
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Celebrating the Birds of South America

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In honor of the first Olympics to take place in Brazil, we are highlighting a book contributed by The Field Museum featuring birds of South America, Le Vaillant’s Histoire naturelle d’une partie d’oiseaux nouveaux et rares de l’Amerique et des Indes (1801). Among several titles chosen for digitization from the Field Museum Library’s impressive Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library, housed in the collections of the Mary W. Runnells Rare Book Room, the entry for the volume in Catalogue of the Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library characterizes it as “a work intended to supplement his Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux d’Afrique (q.v.) by describing and figuring birds not properly included in that work.”

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July 28, 2016byGretchen Rings
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Nicolas-Edme Roret: Insects and Natural History Manuals

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Atlas des insectes, composé de 110 planches, représentant la plupart des insectes décrits dans le Manuel d’histoire naturelle et dans le Manuel d’entomologie [Translation: Atlas of insects, consisting of 110 plates, representing most of the insects described in the Natural History Manual and the Manual of Entomology] was digitized from the Library of Congress (LC)’s collection on May 1st, 2012 by the Internet Archive and included in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). One of the oldest publications scanned from the LC’s collections and added to BHL, this early natural history publication includes 110 plates of various insects.
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June 23, 2016byTomoko Steen
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