University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Main Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library, headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries, welcomes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a new member. The 16th member of the BHL consortium, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will help identify and digitize historical science literature from its collections and add these to the BHL’s online holdings, where all materials may be accessed free by the public.

“The Biodiversity Heritage Library is the preeminent global repository for historic science literature,” said Martin Kalfatovic, BHL program director and associate director for digital services at the Smithsonian Libraries. “The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has partnered from the start with the BHL and BHL members for many years and we are excited that we can formalize our partnership by welcoming them as our 16th member.”

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library is a campus-wide network of libraries serving programs of learning and research in many disciplines and is the largest public university research library in the country with more than 13 million volumes. The Biology Library collection alone contains over 137,000 volumes and there are many more in related departmental libraries on campus, such as the agriculture, natural history, and rare book and manuscript collections. For more information about the University Library, please visit library.illinois.edu.

The current members of the BHL include: the American Museum of Natural History (New York, N.Y.), the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco, Calif.), Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.), the Botany Libraries (Harvard University), the Ernst Mayr Library at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, Mass.), the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, Mass.), the Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, Mo.), the National Library Board (Singapore), the Natural History Museum (London), the Kew York Botanical Garden (Bronx, N.Y.), the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew, United Kingdom), the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.) and the United States Geological Survey. Additionally, three institutions participate at the affiliate level: the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, Ill.), the American of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.) and the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County (Los Angeles, Calif.).

Beyond the English-language efforts, BHL-Europe includes 28 institutions that are working to digitize European literature. In addition, China, Australia, Egypt, Brazil and Africa have created national or regional nodes that may be accessed through the BHL portal.

BHL Spring 2014 Newsletter

The last several months have been an intense and exciting period of growth and expansion for BHL. Not only has the steady growth of collections continued but BHL as an organization has been growing as well. In the first two quarters of fiscal year 2014, three new Members and one new Affiliate joined BHL-Central. BHL’s global presence is expanding as well with one of those new Members also participating as a global node.

To learn more about each of the new BHL Members and Affiliate and what BHL has been up to across the globe, check out BHL’s latest newsletter and quarterly report. Covering both Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 of Fiscal Year 2014, the latest report also includes updates on BHL meetings and collaborations as well as collections, usage, and financial updates.

Enjoy!

BHL Quarterly Report, Q1 and Q2, FY2014

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries, welcomes Washington University Libraries (St. Louis, Missouri) as a new member. The 14th member of the BHL consortium, Washington University Libraries will help identify and digitize historical science literature from its collections and add these to the BHL’s online holdings, where all materials may be accessed free by the public.

Olin Library at Washington University in St. Louis. Photographer and copyright holder: Robert Benson.

Founded in 1853, Washington University in St. Louis is a medium-sized independent research institution widely recognized for its teaching, research, patient care and service to society. Washington University operates seven academic divisions (art and architecture, arts and sciences, business, engineering, law, medicine, and social work and public health), served by 12 libraries whose print holdings number nearly 4.5 million, in addition to millions more books and journals available electronically. For more information about Washington University Libraries, visit www.library.wustl.edu.

“The Biodiversity Heritage Library is the preeminent global repository for historic science literature,” said Martin Kalfatovic, BHL program director and associate director for digital services at the Smithsonian Libraries. “We are excited that the Washington University Libraries are joining us in building a vast information center that provides resources to researchers, students and anyone interested in biodiversity.”

The current members of the BHL include: the American Museum of Natural History (New York, N.Y.), the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco, Calif.), Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.), the Botany Libraries (Harvard University), the Ernst Mayr Library at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, Mass.), the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, Mass.), the Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, Mo.), the Natural History Museum (London), the Kew York Botanical Garden (Bronx, N.Y.), the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew, United Kingdom), the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.), and the United States Geological Survey. Additionally, the three institutions participate at the affiliate level: the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, Ill.), American of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pa.) and the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles County. Beyond the English-language efforts, BHL-Europe was founded and includes 28 institutions that are working to digitize European literature. In addition, China, Australia, Brazil, and Africa have created national or regional nodes that may be accessed through the BHL portal.

On February 22, 2013, we announced that the Library of Congress (LoC) had become the fifteenth member of BHL! As a Steering Committee member, Library of Congress will help us further build the BHL collection by digitizing books in their vast library of over 151 million items.

Becoming a BHL member involves not only dedicating staff and financial resources, but also the signing of an official Memorandum of Understanding. On Thursday, March 28, 2013, Nancy Gwinn (Chair of the BHL Executive Committee and Director of Smithsonian Libraries), Grace Costantino (BHL Program Manager), and Elizabeth O’Brien (Smithsonian Libraries Director of Marketing and Special Events) visited the Library of Congress for a ceremonial signing of the MOU with Roberta Shaffer (Associate Librarian for Library Services, LoC) and Leslie Girard (Confidential Assistant to the Associate Librarian for Library Services, LoC).

Roberta Shaffer (right) signing BHL MOU for LoC with Nancy Gwinn (left). Photo by Elizabeth O’Brien.

So, we’re pleased to say that everything is signed, sealed, and official! We’re so excited to call Library of Congress a partner in our great endeavor to make the world’s biodiversity literature available freely to everyone, everywhere!

And of course, it takes a village to successfully build, maintain, and manage BHL. Each new member must dedicate staff to that village. Learn more about Library of Congress’s representative to BHL, Dr. Tomoko Steen, in our previous blog post. She will coordinate workflows and identify staff to help bring LoC material into our collection of over 40 million open access pages.

Curious to know who else is a BHL member? Check out our BHL membership page.