On 10 April 2019, we will implement additions and changes to the export files available from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

The updates involve the following:

1. A new set of exports will be created alongside the existing exports. The new set will contain only data for material that is hosted by BHL. No externally-hosted content will be included in these files. Because these files are added in addition to the existing export files, no existing users should be affected.
2. The BHL author Identifiers will be added to the creator.txt and partcreator.txt tab-delimited files. The format of these files will change to accommodate the additional data; the author identifier will now be the second “column” in each file. Because of this, anyone regularly harvesting from these files may be affected.

Additional detailed information about these updates will be reflected on the Data Exports: Developer and Data Tools webpage, effective 10 April 2019.

If you have questions, please feel free to submit feedback via this form.

Homepage for the new “About BHL” site.

We’re excited to announce the launch of the new “About BHL” site!

What is BHL’s history? Who’s involved in the Library? What tools and services does BHL offer? How do you search, download content or access data and developer tools in BHL? How can you get involved in the Library? What projects has BHL engaged in?

Find the answers to these questions and much more information about the Biodiversity Heritage Library on our new “About BHL” site at about.biodiversitylibrary.org!

The new “About” site, which lives alongside and is linked from the BHL website at biodiversitylibrary.org, replaces our previous wiki-based “About BHL” pages and features several improved features and functionality. Read on to learn more about some of these new features.

New Look & Feel

The site has been designed to mirror the look of the BHL website. We’ve also integrated our social accounts into the site with streams for our Instagram, Twitter and blog feeds in the right sidebar. Also, check out our testimonials feed above the footer to learn more about BHL’s impact on global research from real users!

Testimonials feed on new “About BHL” site.

Improved Navigation

With our new top menu and category-specific sidebar menus, it’s now easier than ever to navigate through our “About” content and find exactly what you need. But just in case you still can’t find what you’re looking for, we’ve placed a prominent “Contact Us” button in the header.

Consolidated Tools & Services

Tools and services landing page on the new “About BHL” site.

We consolidated links to information about our various tools and services into a single landing page to make it easier for you to explore what BHL has to offer and find the services you need.

New FAQ Center

We’ve created a new FAQ center to help answer some of the most frequent questions we receive. We’ll continue to add to this FAQ with new questions as appropriate. Have a question you don’t see listed? Send us feedback and we can add it!

Have questions or comments about the new “About BHL” site? Feel free to contact us or leave a comment on this post.

The BHL API will be updated on 25 July 2016 to support changes to the BHL site. These changes will accommodate identifying additional Contributors for Items and Parts of items.

First are changes to the API that may affect your existing processes.

The Contributor and ContributorID elements in the result sets of API methods that return “Part” information will move. ContributorID will be included as a PartIdentifier in the Identifiers list. Contributor will be included in a new Contributors list.

These changes are being made to accommodate more than one contributor per part.  For example, if one institution researches/compiles the data and a second institution facilitates the inclusion of that data in BHL, both institutions may be listed as a contributor.  Initially, no more than two contributors per part will be allowed, but by adopting these changes to API responses we allow for additional (unlimited, actually) contributors in the future.

Here is an example that shows how the API responses are changing.  The examples shown here are an output of the GetPartMetadata method, and have been abbreviated for clarity.

Original API Results – highlighted elements are being moved:

<Response>
 <Status>okStatus>
 <Result>
 <PartUrl>
        http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/1
 PartUrl>
 <PartID>1PartID>
 <ItemID>22498ItemID>
 <StartPageID>3190776StartPageID>
 <SequenceOrder>1SequenceOrder>
 <Contributor>BioStorContributor>
 <ContributorID>4443ContributorID>
 <GenreName>ArticleGenreName>
 <Title>
      Notes on certain species of Tetragnatha 
      (Araneae, Argiopidae) in Central America 
      and Mexico
 Title>
 <ContainerTitle>BrevioraContainerTitle>
 <Volume>67Volume>
 <Date>1957Date>
 <PageRange>1--4PageRange>
 <StartPageNumber>1StartPageNumber>
 <EndPageNumber>4EndPageNumber>
 <Authors> [...] Authors>
 <Subjects />
 <Identifiers>
 <PartIdentifier>
 <IdentifierName>ISSNIdentifierName>
 <IdentifierValue>0006-9698IdentifierValue>
 PartIdentifier>
 Identifiers>
 <Pages> [...] Pages>
 <RelatedParts />
 Result>
Response>

Updated API Results – Highlighted elements are the new locations of the moved data:

<Response>
 <Status>okStatus>
 <Result>
 <PartUrl>
        http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/969
 PartUrl>
 <PartID>1PartID>
 <ItemID>22498ItemID>
 <StartPageID>3190776StartPageID>
 <SequenceOrder>1SequenceOrder>
 <GenreName>ArticleGenreName>
 <Title>
        Notes on certain species of Tetragnatha
        (Araneae, Argiopidae) in Central America
        and Mexico
 Title>
 <ContainerTitle>BrevioraContainerTitle>
 <Volume>67Volume>
 <Date>1957Date>
 <PageRange>1--4PageRange>
 <StartPageNumber>1StartPageNumber>
 <EndPageNumber>4EndPageNumber>
 <Authors> [...] Authors>

 <Contributors>
 <Contributor>
 <ContributorName>BioStorContributorName>
 Contributor>
 Contributors>
 <Subjects />
 <Identifiers>
 <PartIdentifier>
 <IdentifierName>BioStorIdentifierName>
 <IdentifierValue>4443IdentifierValue>
 PartIdentifier>
 <PartIdentifier>
 <IdentifierName>ISSNIdentifierName>
 <IdentifierValue>0006-9698IdentifierValue>
 PartIdentifier>
 Identifiers>
 <Pages> [...] Pages>

 <RelatedParts />
 Result>
Response>

Additionally, there will be two additions to the Item metadata.

The new data elements are: RightsHolder and ScanningInstitution.
These will optionally be displayed if there is data for the relevant organizations.

<Response>
 <Status>okStatus>
 <Result>
 <ItemID>59382ItemID>
 <PrimaryTitleID>20770PrimaryTitleID>
 <ThumbnailPageID>17605914ThumbnailPageID>
 <Source>Internet ArchiveSource>
 <SourceIdentifier>bulletin5160hatcSourceIdentifier>
 <Volume>v.51-60 1898-99Volume>
 <Year/>
 <Contributor>
      UMass Amherst Libraries (archive.org)
 Contributor>
 <RightsHolder>
 Biodiversity Heritage Library
 RightsHolder>
 <ScanningInstitution>
 Smithsonian Institution Libraries
 ScanningInstitution>
 <Sponsor>UMass Amherst LibrariesSponsor>
    [...]
 Result>
Response>

Detailed documentation for the BHL APIs is available at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/api2/docs/docs.html.  It will be updated to reflect these changes after they are moved into production on 25 July 2016.

Go to http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/getapikey.aspx to get an API key for BHL.

Information about other BHL developer tools can be found at http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Developer+Tools+and+API.

If you have questions, please feel free to submit feedback via this form.