All posts tagged with program-news

We are honored to celebrate the career of Susan Fraser, who last month retired as the Thomas J. Hubbard Vice President and Director of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). During her 36 years at NYBG, Susan made significant contributions to the Garden, the global library and botanical community, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).

As Chair of BHL, I had the privilege of attending the 25th Meeting of the GBIF Global Governing Board convened in Kilkenny, Ireland, 15-18 October 2018. I represent BHL in its capacity as an Associate Participant in GBIF at the governing board meeting. BHL has been a participant since 2014.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) operates through a network of global nodes to develop and maintain an open data infrastructure for sharing digital biodiversity data.

On 25 August – 1 September 2018, BHL representatives from around the world traveled to Dunedin, New Zealand to attend the joint Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference. Hosted by the Otago Museum and the University of Otago, the conference represented several firsts, including the first joint meeting of these two organizations plus the first SPNHC meeting in the Southern Hemisphere.

With the theme “Collections and Data in an Uncertain World”, the conference was an opportunity for bioinformatics and natural science collections professionals to exchange ideas and expertise as they explored the myriad intersections between collections and the data generated from them. BHL, an institutional member of TDWG, was proud to be a conference partner for this important event.

We’re excited to announce the launch of the new About BHL site!

What is BHL’s history? Who’s involved in the Library? What tools and services does BHL offer? How do you search, download content or access data and developer tools in BHL? How can you get involved in the Library? What projects has BHL engaged in?

Find the answers to these questions and much more information about the Biodiversity Heritage Library on our new About site at about.biodiversitylibrary.org!

The new site, which lives alongside and is linked from our digital library portal at