Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL
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  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with collections

BHL News, Blog Reel

New Collection Development Policy

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The BHL Collections Committee has completed a comprehensive review and revision of BHL’s collection development policy. The new policy is written to provide recommendations and serve the collection management needs of BHL Partners. As a key objective of BHL’s Strategic Plan 2020-2025, the new policy is a significant revision to the original policy written in 2010. In learning together as a collaborative community of practice since then, our understanding of BHL collection management has been expanded and refined to:

  • clarify collection management priorities;
  • articulate our responsibility to pursue more diverse perspectives;
  • outline BHL Partner expectations;
  • better define our scope;
  • describe BHL-specific curation best practices; and
  • provide transparency by posting the complete policy via BHL’s About Site.

Going forward, the collection development policy will be reviewed on a yearly basis for minor updates.

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November 17, 2022byBianca Crowley
BHL News, Blog Reel

BHL Resources to Support Distance Learning

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BHL’s digital library provides free and open online access to over 250,000 volumes from the 15th-21st centuries on a wide range of biodiversity subjects. These collections offer great resources to support distance learning.

All of our content can be accessed online for free and in full through our digital library portal at biodiversitylibrary.org. No login, account, or membership is required. You can also freely download anything in our library in a variety of formats. Our FAQ provides information on how to search the library and download content.

In addition to our general collections, we’ve identified a selection of materials that may be of particular interest to educators and students. Explore these resources below.

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March 17, 2020byGrace Costantino
BHL News, Blog Reel

Introducing the CETAF E-SCORE Award for Excellence in Research Based on Natural Science Collections

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The Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) is launching a new initiative to reward early-career researchers, within the fields of taxonomy, biodiversity and geodiversity science, who base their research on natural science collections. E-SCORE – Excellence in Scientific Collections-based Research, is a celebration of the new generation of scientists who have shown dedication to the use of collections that help document, describe and understand life on earth, and the processes that have shaped it. The award also celebrates the United Nations endorsed International Day for Biological Diversity, which falls annually on the 22nd of May to commemorate the 1992 adoption of the Convention on Biological Diversity. CETAF will award E-SCORE for the first time in 2020 to mark the end of the UN International Decade of Biodiversity.

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January 7, 2020byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Cetaceans and Cephalopods: Supporting the Work of Collections Managers One Specimen at a Time

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Have you ever been to a museum and wondered about the history of the specimens on display? If you have, then you’d probably be interested in talking to the museum’s collections managers, as their jobs include not only caring for and improving accessibility to the collections, but also serving as a living knowledge repository for information about the history of the collections. Take the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, for example. Amongst the many treasures on display in that museum are five whale skeletons suspended from the roof. Where did those specimens come from?
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November 10, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

BHL at 10 Notable Books Collection

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2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. We kicked off our year-long celebrations with our #BHLat10 campaign in April, highlighting our history, growth, and milestones. As part of that campaign, we also highlighted the Top 10 Viewed and Top 10 Downloaded books in BHL. We’re continuing the celebrations with the launch of our BHL at 10 Notable Books Collection.
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June 1, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books

Celebrating our Collections, #BHLat10 Style

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2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. We’re kicking off our year-long celebrations with our #BHLat10 campaign this week, 11-15 April 2016. The campaign celebrates BHL’s impact on the global science community, our history and growth, and our collections. Content is being published on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, and BHL.
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April 15, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

The scientific and historical importance of small, old collections

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In 1838, Ferdinand Joseph L’Herminier, a French botanist and zoologist born in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, published the first description of the Double-striped Thick-knee (vocifer), today known by the scientific name Burhinus bistriatus vocifer [1]. L’Herminier used six specimens to describe the species, which he originally named Ædicnemus vocifer. One of the specimens that L’Herminier used for his description is housed in the Baillon Collection at the Musée George Sand et de la Vallée Noire, La Châtre, France.
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October 8, 2015byGrace Costantino
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives in Washington, D.C., BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and make it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.”

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