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News
Featured Books
    All Featured Books
    Book of the Month Series
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  • Home
  • News
  • Featured Books
    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
  • User Stories
  • Campaigns
    • Fossil Stories
    • Garden Stories
    • Monsters Are Real
    • Page Frights
    • Her Natural History
    • Earth Optimism 2020
  • Tech Blog
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with smithsonian-libraries

Blog Reel, Featured Books

Notes accompanying collection of useful plants made by W. J. Fisher at [Kodiak] in 1899

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In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we would like to highlight a field book that documents Native American knowledge of natural resources. The field book was created by William J. Fisher, who lived in southern Alaska from 1879 until his death in 1903. Fisher’s notebook documents his final years collecting and looks at the relationship between the Alutiiq (Aleut) and their plants by recording medicinal and food uses for 48 specimens.
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November 22, 2016byLesley Parilla
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Featured Books, Page Frights

Arachnophobes Beware! The Birth of Spider Nomenclature Just in Time for Halloween!

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Arachnophobia (the fear of spiders and other arachnids) is one of the most prevalent phobias in the world, and some estimates suggest that over 30.5% of people in the United States alone have a fear of arachnids (Health Research Funding 2014). Given the pervasiveness of this phobia, we thought it only appropriate to spend some time on the subject of spiders as part of our Page Frights celebration. Being the science-focused organization that we are, we decided to look at the topic of arachnids from a taxonomic point of view. The founding text on spider nomenclature is Svenska Spindlar. It was published in 1757 by Carl Clerck, a member of the Swedish nobility.
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October 27, 2016byGrace Costantino
BHL News, Blog Reel, Campaigns

Of Dragons and Interns: Meet the Woman Who’s Helping Us Add Dragons and Other Fun Products to the BHL Store!

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BHL is excited to welcome Carolina Murcia, our new Product Development and Marketing Intern! Over her eight-month internship through the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, D.C., Carolina will conduct market research and create products and marketing materials for the BHL CafePress store.
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October 19, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, User Stories

Beyond Tunnels & Bigamy: The Scientific Contributions of the Infamous Harrison Dyar

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If you have ever heard of entomologist Harrison Dyar, there’s a good chance that it was in relation to a series of tunnels that he dug beneath Washington, D.C. Or it may have been in relation to his bigamy. But if that’s all you know about Dyar, then you only know the tabloid tales. Harrison Dyar was Honorary Custodian of Lepidoptera at the United States National Museum for over 30 years. He studied sawflies, moths, butterflies and mosquitos and described hundreds of species and genera.
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September 8, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Catesby’s Magnificent Natural History, In Three Editions

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In May of 1729, the first part of the first fully illustrated book on the flora and fauna of North America was presented to the Royal Society. Upon the conclusion of the work, Royal Society Secretary Cromwell Mortimer praised it as “the most magnificent Work I know of, since the Art of Printing has been discovered” (Nelson and Elliott, 165). The work was The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, and all told it was issued in eleven parts (including an appendix) over an eighteen year period (from 1729-1747).
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September 1, 2016byGrace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

The National Park Service, Historic Surveys, and the Hunt for Documentation

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This year is the National Park Service’s Centennial anniversary. In recognition, we thought we would take a look at one of the geological surveys that inspired the founding of Yellowstone National Park. In recent months, researchers in increasing numbers have looked for specimens and field documentation relating to Yellowstone, specifically from the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871. This survey is important for a number of reasons. It was the first federally funded survey, and was instrumental in introducing the American public to Yellowstone’s natural wonders. It inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park in 1872. Smithsonian is a repository for specimens and documentation from the Hayden Geological Survey and numerous others relating to the U.S.

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August 25, 2016byLesley Parilla
Blog Reel

How’s your fern and bird coverage, BHL?

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“Every one knows what a bird is,” asserts an early 20th century book that I found while browsing the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). As I’ve learned during my Professional Development Internship with Jacqueline Chapman at Smithsonian Libraries this summer, it’s not always that simple. Taxonomy is ever-changing, especially at the granular level needed by subject specialists around the world who use BHL to conduct research on organisms ranging from mosses to turtles to fungi. BHL is a consortial digital library whose member libraries digitize works in natural history and botany based on both user requests and subject librarians’ selections.
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August 23, 2016byBecca Greenstein
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