All posts tagged with field-museum

The 2024 Biodiversity Heritage Library Annual Meeting saw BHL partners and interested parties returning to Chicago, Illinois, the location of many BHL gatherings over the years. This year’s meeting was also significant as it coincided with the dual emergence of Brood XIII of Periodical Cicadas (Magicicada) and Brood XIX elsewhere in Illinois and the Midwest.

Attendees were welcomed to Chicago by our co-hosts, The Field Museum of Natural History and the Chicago Botanic Garden. Throughout the week of 13 May to 17 May, attendees were treated to behind-the-scenes tours at both locations. The BHL Day 2024 Symposium, Year of the Cicada: Buzzing with 17 Years of Biodiversity Achievements, took advantage of the emergence of the Magicicada Brood XIII emergence and featured Magicicada expert, Dr. Gene Kritsky, as keynote speaker.

March is Women’s History Month, and we’re celebrating with an international social media campaign produced in collaboration with our partners highlighting women and their contributions to natural history — Her Natural History: A Celebration of Women in Natural History.

Kicking-off with an all-day social media blitz on Friday, 8 March 2019 (International Women’s Day) and continuing throughout the month, Her Natural History aims to increase awareness of and information about women in the biodiversity sciences.

Thanks to everyone who tuned in for our #Martha100 TwitterChat with @NMNH (National Museum of Natural History) and @SILibraries (Smithsonian Libraries) yesterday!

One of the BHL partner institutions, The Field Museum Library, was recently awarded a small grant from the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) to contribute titles to the growing BHL corpus. The proposal entitled “Empowering Biodiversity Research,” allowed The Field Museum Library to contribute 34 new titles to the BHL.

When Musei Leveriani Explicatio, Anblica et Latina (1792-96), by George Shaw, went up for auction at Christie’s Auction House in April of 2008it was described as “one of the most comprehensive natural history collections of the eighteenth century.” It sold for $3,926 USD. The work documents the specimens found in Sir Ashton Lever’s museum (the Museum Leverianum), which was originally housed in his home at Alkrington Hall. The book contains 72 hand-colored engraved plates after, among others, Charles Reuben Ryley, Sarah Stone, and Philip Reinagle. With such a claim as “most comprehensive natural history collection,” we had to check it out, and the quality of the illustrations blew us away. So: Voila! Here you have our book of the week!