On 1 January 2026, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) will take flight, becoming fully independent after nearly two decades hosted by the Smithsonian Institution.

This transition marks an historic milestone for BHL and for the global biodiversity and open-science communities we serve. It also brings an urgent challenge: ensuring that the infrastructure, staffing, and partnerships that keep over 500 years of biodiversity knowledge open to the world remain secure and sustainable.

Our Community Has Lifted Us. Now We Must Keep Flying…

When the Smithsonian announced in early 2025 that it would step back from hosting and administering BHL, the global consortium rallied. Through our Call for Support, we received commitments from institutions and outpourings of love from our global network – a testament to the strength of the BHL community and the value placed on free, global access to biodiversity literature.

Those pledges give us the stability we need to complete our transition and begin building a long-term foundation for the future. Yet they will only sustain us through 2026 – perhaps into 2027.

Puffin, Fratercula arctica (Pl. 51), illustrated by Henry Constantine Richter, from The Birds of Great Britain by John Gould, 1873.

To truly soar beyond this transition, we must secure the technical infrastructure, hosting, and staffing that will carry BHL forward for decades to come.

Why We Need Your Help

The #GiveBHLWings campaign, launched for Giving Tuesday 2025, invites everyone who values open knowledge to be part of this transformation. 

Your donation directly supports:

• The servers and systems that deliver millions of digitized pages every day;
• The staff and volunteers who manage metadata, partnerships, and outreach;
• The modernization of infrastructure to make biodiversity literature discoverable, connected, and citable within the global research ecosystem.

Common Flying Fish (Pl. 8), from The natural history of fishes, particularly their structure and economical uses, by John Stevenson Bushnan, 1840.

As we count down to BHL’s independence on 1 January 2026, we invite you to join us. 

Every contribution – large or small – will help ensure that researchers, educators, students, and nature enthusiasts around the world continue to have free access to the biodiversity knowledge that underpins conservation and science.

Help BHL Take Flight

Your support will carry the Biodiversity Heritage Library into its new future: independent, resilient, global, and ready to soar.

🌿 Donate today: help #GiveBHLWings

📢 Spread the word: share the #GiveBHLWings campaign far and wide

💚 Share the love: use #ILoveBHL on social media

💡 Share your ideas: Respond to our Call for Support

📚 Stay up to date: follow #BHLTransition news on the BHL Blog

Squirrel Flying-phalander (Pl. XV), from A hand-book to the marsupialia and monotremata, by Richard Lydekker, 1894.

As we come to the end of 2020, we reflect on the challenges that have profoundly impacted us as societies and individuals this year, requiring us to rethink how we do our jobs, interact with friends and colleagues, and access and share information. Facing these unprecedented challenges together, we continue to work with our partners to ensure that you have free access to the resources you need to empower your research—no matter where you are.

With many of our partners working virtually this year, we’ve focused on projects to improve our digital collections remotely. We’ve uploaded previously digitized and born-digital content, including recent issues of publications like Records of the Australian Museum, Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia, and American Museum Novitates. We’ve improved our metadata, reconciling duplicate entries for and editing over 2,000 author names and defining tens of thousands of additional articles and correspondence in the collection. We’ve also enhanced page-level descriptions for over 3,000 volumes since March. This work includes articulating illustrations within these volumes, allowing us to upload over 75,000 new images to the BHL Flickr over the past nine months—bringing our total Flickr collection to over 240,000 free nature images.

This work ensures that BHL continues to support your research needs…anytime, anywhere. It is thanks to the generosity and support of our community that we were able to pivot quickly and meet the needs of our users in a rapidly-changing environment throughout 2020. Please consider making a gift in support of BHL this Giving Tuesday, and help ensure that we can rise to meet whatever comes our way, together.

From Us to You: The Gift of Free Nature Art

Your support makes it possible for everyone to discover the wonders of biodiversity…not just through text, but through art as well! Visit the BHL Flickr to explore over 240,000 nature images—all free to download and reuse.

Visit Flickr Today!

Visit our About site for tips on how to search and download the images in Flickr. Keep scrolling to explore a selection of some of the most popular images on the BHL Flickr.

Acanthophoenix crinita. Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe. v. 16 (1865-67). Contributed in BHL from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library. View in Flickr.

Taf. III (Chaceon affinis). Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer “Valdivia” 1898-1899. Bd. 6 (1904). Contributed in BHL from the MBLWHOI Library. View in Flickr.

Taf. 100 (Antelopes). Kunstformen der Natur. (1899-1904). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries. View in Flickr.

Tab. 63. Tabulae phytographicae, analysin generum plantarum exhibentes. v. 2 (1804). Contributed in BHL from the New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library. View in Flickr.

King parrot and Pennant’s parakeet. The illustrated book of canaries and cage-birds, British and foreign. (c. 1878). Contributed in BHL from the Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library. View in Flickr.

Tab. XII (dragons). Historiae naturalis de quadrupedibus libri. (1657). Contributed in BHL from Smithsonian Libraries. View in Flickr.