BHL recently participated in the 8th Meeting of European Bird Curators, held in Prague, October 3-5, 2013.

Porphyrio poliocephalus. From: A history of the birds of Europe. London: Published by the Author, 1871-1881. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/38625561

Alison Harding, of the Natural History Museum in London, delivered a presentation entitled “BHL: The Vast Library of Life.”  The presentation provided an overview of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and showcased the tools and resources which BHL offers as a free, open access project.

Many attendees were already familiar with BHL and were very complimentary about the ongoing progress of the BHL consortium. Overall, BHL’s participation in the conference was a wonderful experience, providing opportunities to interact directly with some of our users and to gather feedback and answer their questions.

When Musei Leveriani Explicatio, Anblica et Latina (1792-96), by George Shaw, went up for auction at Christie’s Auction House in April of 2008 it 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!

As stated, Sir Ashton’s museum, which comprised approximately 28,000 items, was originally housed in his home. However, hoping to make the museum self-financing, Lever moved the collection to Leicester House in London in 1774, opening it to the public in 1775 with an admission fee of half a guinea. The museum was popular but not as financially successful as Lever had hoped. In 1784, he was forced to sell the collection, which had been valued at £53,000. He did so by public lottery. 8,000 tickets, priced at 1 guinea each, were sold. James Parkinson won the collection with a ticket purchased by his late wife. Parkinson successfully ran the museum until May of 1806, when, despite the continued popularity of the museum, he was also forced to sell the collection by piece at an auction lasting 65 days.

While the two volumes of this work on BHL contain dozens of gorgeous illustrations (all of which you can browse at your leisure on Flickr!), we’ve selected just a few of our favorites to feature here. Sir Ashton and Mr. Parkinson would have been proud that, though the museum itself did not endure, a record of the enchanting and impressive specimens contained within it has lasted these 200+ years. And now, thanks to BHL and the modern digital era, you don’t have to spend $4,000 at auction to enjoy the marvels that one composed the Museum Leverianum! All you need is a computer and Internet connection!

Musei Leveriani Explicatio, Anblica et Latina (1792-96), by George Shaw, was contributed by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. See the images from this book on Flickr!

On May 20th, Graham Higley, head of library and information services at the Natural History Museum in London, accepted the 2010 John Thackray medal, which was awarded to the BHL in recognition of our past three years of work building our digital library. Mr. Higley (pictured left) accepted this award on behalf of Tom Garnett, Director of the BHL.

The John Thackray medal “recognizes significant achievements in the history or bibliography of natural history.” According to the website for The Society for the History of Natural History, which awards this medal, “significant achievements” specifically include “making available … collections and/or information in new and novel ways.” While the 34 million + pages of literature that BHL has now made available for open access use, in addition to several of our special features, such as species name finding, the ability to generate your own custom PDF, and the opportunity to nominate titles for scanning, is a great start, this award serves as an encouragement to all of us at BHL to continue pushing the envelope and developing new ways to provide meaningful information and services to our users.

When asked to comment about the significance of this award for BHL, Mr. Higley responded,

“John Thackray was a past President of The Society for the History of Natural History (SHNH) and also the Archivist at the Natural History Museum, London (NHM) for several decades. It is particularly fitting that the BHL should be recognized by this award, since John and his colleagues in the SHNH made avid use of the historic collections at the NHM. It is now possible for their successors to look at or obtain copies of these rare early texts directly from the BHL, which is a truly global resource for historians as well as current scientists.”

We send a special thanks to The Society for the History of Natural History for honoring us with this award. We plan to continue to provide rare, important, and relevant biodiversity information to our users, and promise to continue developing novel ways for our users to interact with and use this content.

For more information on the John Thackray Medal, see our previous blog post regarding the award and visit The Society for the History of Natural History website to see their official announcement of the award.