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

All posts tagged with museums

Blog Reel, Featured Books

The Untold Story of Virginia and José Correia: Scientific Explorers in Search of Rare Birds

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José and Virginia Correia are one of history’s most prolific bird collecting teams. For over three decades, they participated in many scientific exploring expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History, including the Whitney South Sea Expedition from 1922 to 1926.

Although the published literature is scant regarding their scientific contributions, their story is certainly worth telling. Described by The Standard-Times (New Bedford) as a “life reading like fiction”,³  —  their work has emerged from obscurity with the recent digitization of José’s field notes from the Whitney South Sea Expedition (1920–1941). Now audiences far and wide can enjoy this quintessential American story of two immigrants propelled by fate, hard work, and a sincere desire to improve one’s lot in life.

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December 3, 2020byJJ Dearborn
Blog Reel, User Stories

Tasting Platypus Milk: Linking Specimens and Stories

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Zoological knowledge typically comes from one of two primary sources: the living and the dead — observations of animals going about their business in their habitats; and the study of preserved specimens. We rarely get the whole picture of an animal’s natural history without both and each feed into how species are portrayed to those that have never seen them.

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July 7, 2020byJack Ashby
Blog Reel, User Stories

Getting Fishy with BHL: Empowering Discoveries and Connections Around Museum Collections

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Twitter is a popular communication channel amongst the scientific community. Scientists use the platform to communicate with colleagues and share their research findings with both other scientists and the public.

Twitter may also be a valuable source of data for researchers. For example, ecologists from the University of Gloucestershire found that “Twitter-mined” data is useful for phenological studies, such as winged-ant emergence or the appearance of house spiders in the fall.

Twitter conversations can also spark unexpected discoveries. For example, a recent @BioDivLibrary Twitter conversation helped uncover a connection between the scientific literature and a museum’s collections.

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September 5, 2019byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

MUDPIE — Online at BHL! Documenting the History of Computers in Museums

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On September 12, 1967 Ralph Axtell, of the Biology Department of Southern Illinois University, called the Smithsonian Institution using the teletype connected to his time-shared computer and asked for a [computer] program for the calculation of standard deviations. The Smithsonian then sent him two computer programs. This demonstrated that, using data communications equipment and telephone lines, “it is fast, practical, and feasible to exchange programs in the BASIC language, written for use by biosystematists, between institutions in the United States.” A revolution had begun that would transform museums, research, systematics and science.

The following day Dr. James A. Peters produced the inaugural issue of the MUDPIE (Museum and University Data Program and Information Exchange) Newsletter.

MUDPIE newsletter documents many early events in the adoption of computers and timesharing computing in museums and universities, and was founded and produced by Dr. Peters, the only editor in the newsletter’s publication history. Twenty-six issues of MUDPIE were produced and distributed over a five-year period, between September 1967 and September 1972. All issues are now digitally available at the Biodiversity Heritage Library thanks to the Smithsonian Libraries.

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November 15, 2018byDavid Bridge
Blog Reel, User Stories

19th Century Butterflies: Reconstructing a Collection’s History with BHL

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The Naturalis Biodiversity Center, a recent BHL Affiliate, is home to one of the largest natural history collections in the world, consisting of over 37 million specimens. Additionally, Naturalis has contributed nearly 200,000 pages to the BHL collection since 2016. Over 900,000 of the museum’s 37+ million specimens are butterflies, some dating back to the 18th century.
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March 9, 2017byGrace 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
BHL News, Blog Reel

Celebrating Women In Science and Museum Day Live

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March is Women’s History Month, a month dedicated to celebrating the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. In recognition of this celebration, the Smithsonian is coordinating a special edition of its signature Museum Day Live!
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March 3, 2016byGrace 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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