The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as
worldwide consortium
of natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to address this challenge by digitizing the natural history literature held in their collections and making it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.” The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, publishers, bioinformaticians, and information technology professionals to develo
tools and services
to facilitate greater access, interoperability, and reuse of content and data. BHL provides a range of services, data exports, and APIs to allow users to download content, harvest source data files, and reuse materials for research purposes. Through taxonomic intelligence tools developed b
Global Names Architecture
BHL indexes the taxonomic names throughout the collection, allowing researchers to locate publications about specific taxa. In partnership with the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

and through local digitization efforts
BHL's portal
provides free access to hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 59 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries. Founded in 2006, BHL soon became the third broad digitization project for biodiversity literature, after Gallica and AnimalBase. In 2008, the size of Gallica and AnimalBase was passed, and BHL is now by far the world's largest digitization project for biodiversity literature. It was the literature cornerstone of the Encyclopedia of Life.

Composition

Initially, the Biodiversity Heritage Library was a collaboration of ten natural history and botanical libraries and currently, it has fourteen members. The founding member libraries are: * American Museum of Natural History (New York, New York) * Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago, Illinois) * Botany Libraries (

Harvard University Herbaria The Harvard University Herbaria and Botanical Museum are institutions located on the grounds of Harvard University at 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Botanical Museum is one of three which comprise the Harvard Museum of Natura ...

) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) * Ernst Mayr Library ( Museum of Comparative Zoology) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) * Marine Biological Laboratory of

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, i ...

(Woods Hole, Massachusetts) * Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, Missouri) * Natural History Museum (London, England) * The New York Botanical Garden (Bronx, New York) *

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,100 ...

(Richmond, United Kingdom) *

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...

(Washington D.C.) In May 2009, two new members were added to the consortium: * Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) *

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...

(San Francisco, California) In November 2011, two new members were added to the consortium: *

Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over 8 million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 periodical titles are available online. It ...

(Ithaca, New York) *

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

(Reston, Virginia) In February 2013, one new member was added to the consortium: *

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

(Washington D.C.) Since 2009, the BHL has expanded globally. The

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

's eContentPlus program has funded the BHL-Europe project, with 28 institutions, to assemble the European language literature. In May 2009 a European partner project BHL-Europe was founded by 28 consortium partners, mostly European libraries. Shortly thereafter another project BHL-China was launched in Beijing, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since then BHL in the strict sense has been called BHL-US/UK (usually only BHL-US), the global project has been referred to as BHL-Global, to distinguish it from the US/UK project. The global BHL project is managed primarily by the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.), Natural History Museum (London), and Missouri Botanical Garden. Six regional centers are planned. In 2010, the

Atlas of Living Australia The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is an online repository of information about Australian plants, animals, and fungi. Development started in 2006. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an organisation sig ...

created a regional node for Australia. The digitisation operation is hosted by Museums Victoria and is nationally funded by the ALA. Australia's museums, herbaria, royal societies, field naturalist clubs and government organisations make up the contributors. Additionally, Brazil (through SciELO), and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina have also created regional BHL nodes. These projects will work together to share content, protocols, services, and digital preservation practices. There is an online BHL portal featuring

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

API integration, AJAX, tag clouds, and JPEG2000 images that facilitate multi-resolution zoom and pan. A companion project exists in Europe and is known as

Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe The Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe (BHL-Europe) was a three-year (2009–2012) EU project aimed to the coordination of digitization of literature on biodiversity. It involved 28 major natural history museums, botanical gardens, libra ...

Governance

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is managed by a Secretariat headquartered a
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
in Washington, DC. An Executive Committee, elected by Biodiversity Heritage Library Members, provides strategic direction. The Secretariat is led by the BHL Program Director. Thomas Garnett served in that position (2006–2012) and was succeeded by Martin R. Kalfatovic (2012–present).

Awards

The Biodiversity Heritage Library was awarded the 2010 John Thackray Medal of the

Society for the History of Natural History The Society for the History of Natural History (SHNH) is an international society for everyone who is interested in natural history in the broadest sense. This includes botany, zoology and geology as well as natural history collections, exploration ...

. This award "recognizes significant achievements in the history or bibliography of natural history". In March 2012, the Missouri Botanical Garden received $260,000 in funding from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

to identify and describe natural history illustrations from the digitized books and journals in the online Biodiversity Heritage Library. The Art of Life project will develop software tools for automated identification and description of visual resources contained within the more than 100,000 volumes and 38 million pages of core historic literature made available through BHL digitization activities. IDG's Computerworld Honors Program announced on March 19, 2013 the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) as a 2013 Laureate. The annual award program honors visionary applications of information technology promoting positive social, economic, and educational change. In May 2013, the Biodiversity Heritage Library was the recipient of the Charles Robert Long Award of Extraordinary Merit from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL). The award is the highest honor bestowed by CBHL, honoring outstanding contributions and meritorious service to the field of botanical and horticultural literature, with only 14 recipients named since 1988. In October 2015, the Biodiversity Heritage Library was awarded the

’s Internet Heroes at the 2015 Library Leaders’ Forum in San Francisco, 21–23 October 2015. The Digital Library Federation named the Biodiversity Heritage Library a joint winner (along with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting) of the DLF 2016 Community/Capacity Award. The award recognizes collection action over individual achievement and honors community-minded capacity building in digital libraries, archives and museums. In appreciation of the services to taxonomists, a species of snail from

Laos Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist s ...

was named ''Vargapupa biheli'' in 2015, the species name derived from the initials BHL. A second species, a new species of fossil

robber fly The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. They are powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, stout proboscis enclosing the sharp, sucking hypopharynx. The name "robber flies" reflects their notoriously aggressive pre ...

,
Kishenehnoasilus bhl
' named after the Biodiversity Heritage Library in 2019.

Funding sources

The primary funding for the Biodiversity Heritage Library came via the Encyclopedia of Life through a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Additional grants have been received from The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, The Richard Lounsbery Foundation, the

Institute of Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is an independent agency of the United States federal government established in 1996. It is the main source of federal support for libraries and museums within the United States, having the ...

(IMLS). The

Council on Library and Information Resources The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an American independent, nonprofit organization. It works with libraries, cultural institutions, and higher learning communities on developing strategies to improve research, teaching, an ...

(CLIR) awarded the Biodiversity Heritage Library funding in 2015 as part of the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives program $491,713 to support increased accessibility to original scientific documentation found in archival field notes. Members of the Biodiversity Heritage Library also have received generous support from their parent institutions. In addition to staffing and other costs, direct contributions have included the Atherton Seidell Endowment Fund by the

References

External links

*
Biodiversity Heritage Library
at

{{Authority control Harvard Library Missouri Botanical Garden Discipline-oriented digital libraries Mass digitization World Digital Library Smithsonian Institution museums