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BHL Update at the EOL Executive Committee Meeting

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The BHL and Encylopedia of Life (EOL) share the vision of open access to knowledge about life on earth. BHL works to achieve this goal by providing open access to biodiversity literature. EOL tackles this challenge by gathering, generating, and sharing biodiversity knowledge in an open, freely accessible digital repository.

BHL and EOL have been collaborating since 2007, sharing content, best practices, and expertise. Both websites are also extensively interlinked. Taxa identified on pages in BHL are linked to the corresponding species page in EOL. Likewise,  EOL species pages contain links to all identified literature in BHL referencing those species. Through the use of machine tagging, BHL also supplies species illustrations to EOL. To date, 16,496,376 pages in BHL link to EOL species pages, and 1,177,510 EOL pages link to BHL literature. BHL has contributed 13,808 images to EOL.

On 28-29 July, 2014, the EOL Executive Committee Meeting was held at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Agenda topics included strategic planning, EOL content growth and integration with external databases, repackaging content for educational purposes, and the success of Traitbank (a searchable, comprehensive, open digital repository for organism traits, measurements, interactions and other facts for all taxa across the tree of life).

http://www.slideshare.net/costantinog/bhl-update-at-the-encyclopedia-of-life-executive-committee-meeting-2014

Dr. Nancy Gwinn, Director of Smithsonian Libraries and the BHL Executive Committee Chair, was asked to give a BHL update at the meeting. Her presentation highlighted BHL content and membership growth, the Art of Life project, and notable activities over the past six months, including the Field Book Project, participation in the Bouchout Declaration, the joint SIL/BHL exhibit "Once There Were Billions,"Purposeful Gaming, Mining Biodiversity, and the Global Names Project.

Dr. Gwinn also showcased notable BHL/EOL collaborative activities and achievements over the past six months. The May 28th Smithsonian Associates event on Digital Volunteerism, which provided volunteers an opportunity to tag BHL illustrations with species names and explore the iNaturalist platform, was of particular interest.

"Planning for EOL's future is proceeding with vigor and enthusiasm," said Dr. Gwinn following the meeting. "I am pleased that BHL continues to contribute to this process."

Making biodiversity knowledge freely available to everyone is an ambitious goal. But by continuing to share content and collaborate with EOL and like-minded initiatives through joint events, knowledge transfer, and cooperative needs analysis and service development, we are confident we will achieve it.

View Nancy's Presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/costantinog/bhl-update-at-the-encyclopedia-of-life-executive-committee-meeting-2014

Avibase, The World Bird Database

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As part of our BHL & Our Users series, we recently interviewed Denis Lepage, Senior Scientist at the National Data Center, Bird Studies Canada and creator of Avibase, an impressive online resource on the birds of the world.  With over 12 million records, the database covers information on about 10,000 species and 22,000 subspecies of birds, including distribution, taxonomy, and synonyms in several languages.

Over the last 20 years, Lepage has devoted his energy and inspiration to building and managing this extensive resource. Denis recently contacted us to share the role BHL has played in making his work possible and we're thrilled that he's agreed to share it here with you as well.  Enjoy!

BHL & Our Users: Denis Lepage

What is your area of interest?

My interest in taxonomy for Avibase is primarily a personal endeavor.  One of my goals for Avibase is to organize all bird taxonomy, whether current or historical, so we can track how our understanding of taxonomic concepts and scientific names has evolved over time. Since it began, the database has grown to about 12 million records, and I have developed various approaches to address some of taxonomy's unique challenges. These have recently been detailed in a paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

I am particularly interested in how the same scientific names are constantly being used for describing concepts that are actually representing different populations. Because of the rules of nomenclature, when a population is split into two or more species for instance, the original scientific name must remain with the one represented by the oldest specimen. Because of this, a scientific name may actually mean some very different things depending on who uses it or when it was used. The name Gallinula chloropus could mean a bird found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania but the birds found in the Americas could be alternatively called G. chloropus or G. galeata. If you naively looked at G. chloropus records on a global map, you would see a sudden and marked drop in sightings starting a few years ago in the Americas. You would probably eventually figure out that those have simply shifted to a different name, but the point is that this disorganizes things.


Screenshot of some of the reporting tools available in My Avibase


The problem is a lot more widespread than most people seem to realize, particularly as we start gathering vast amounts of data into large biodiversity inventories containing hundreds of millions of records. By my own estimate, less than half the world's species of birds have been represented by a stable and consistent name over the last hundred years or so. In some cases, such as with Puffinus Iherminieri, a single scientific name has been used to describe up to 18 different concepts, which really only share being represented by a common type specimen. In the broader sense, the name Puffinus Iherminieri can be used to represent a large complex of about 16 species according to today's understanding of taxonomy. Several of those are threatened species, so not being able to be precise about what a name means has real direct implications for things such as conservation. These difficulties are also compounded by several other challenges, such as name synonymy. While the rules of nomenclature were well designed to address the problems of changes in names and synonymy, they have completely ignored the issue of changes to the circumscription (what each name is used to represent).  The ZooKeys paper explains how I have addressed this problem in Avibase, and how this may be useful for other taxonomic groups.

In addition to that, Avibase also offers lots of resources for birdwatchers, including over 10,000 different checklists from all countries, states, and provinces, and many smaller islands around the world. Those are available in several taxonomies and providing common name synonyms in over 200 languages from Afrikaans to Zulu. There is an Avibase Flickr group to which nearly a thousand people contribute, and those are made available in the species pages, as well as in the form of illustrated checklists for any region of the world. I primarily designed Avibase with my own personal interests in mind as a birdwatcher, but I am very excited that so many people also find it useful. A relatively recent addition is the section called My Avibase, where people can maintain their life lists and generate cool reports that tell them where they can go next in their world adventures, and how many new species they can expect to see. By combining this with data from thousands of observers who contribute to eBird, I can also provide better estimates, for instance on which species they are most likely to find at different times of year, and more.

How long have you been in your field of study?

I started building the Avibase database just over 20 years ago, but it was launched as a web site around 2003. My original goal was mostly to create a personal database that contained all of the bird species and that I could use for tracking my own personal sightings. It then gradually evolved into something much bigger.

When did you first discover BHL?
A few years ago, through research for historical documents on archive.org and Google books.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?

BHL provides access to historical documents on bird taxonomy that are often difficult for me to access otherwise, particularly outside of an academic environment. Being able to access digital copies of these documents at my leisure is extremely convenient.

How often do you use BHL?

Regularly, but this varies.  Over the last year, it has been several times per month.

How do you usually use BHL?

I generally download the whole PDFs for my own local use.

What are your favorite features / services on BHL?

Access to digitized copies of historical documents. Since I am not located in a university or a place where I can access a comprehensive library, this is invaluable. Even if I had such access, having these documents available online, with their content indexed and searchable from desk is incredibly convenient. For instance, I often come across old names that are no longer in use, and that I am trying to resolve their meaning.  Many of those names are only found in old historical documents (e.g., Hellmayr's Catalog of the Birds of the Americas), and having them simply available a Google search away is incredibly powerful.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

Part of what I have been trying to do is convert the content of some of these documents into structured database pieces. This is very challenging in many respects. It assumes that the optical character recognition (OCR) is efficient and accurate, and that the information can be relatively easily parsed into their individual components. In several instances, I have found that the individual books that had been used for scanning had many marking made by hand, and which often disrupted the OCR process. I think that working on copies that are as clean as possible would be a desirable and reasonable objective. Improving the OCR process itself would also be incredibly valuable, but these books are probably more challenging than your average publication. They often rely heavily on abbreviations, symbols, highly stylized fonts and of course contain words such as scientific names that are not found in standard dictionaries.

If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why?

So far, undoubtedly the volumes from the Peter's Checklist of the Birds of the World. These represent a very important compendium of every bird in the world known at the time of publication and are used as the principal reference underlying most other subsequent global taxonomic effort. After a few years of manual labor by myself and a colleague, I am glad to say that we were able to convert major portions of the 16 volume series into a database that can be accessed openly here: http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/peterschecklist.jsp. Efforts are underway to expand the database to include synonymy information that was also included in Peters' checklist.

Thank you, Denis, for sharing your work on Avibase and how you use the Biodiversity Heritage Library!

Twitterchat on Martha, Extinction, & Historic Literature

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Pigeons. Selby, P. John (1845). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/20191792 
Please join the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the Smithsonian Libraries, and the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for a twitterchat on September 2nd, 2014. The chat will take place between 2-3 pm (EST) and feature Helen James, Curator of Birds and our recent Once There Were Billions exhibit in NMNH, and Martin Kalfatovic, BHL Program Director.

This September marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the very last passenger pigeon, Martha. In honor of the event, our chat will focus on Martha and the passenger pigeon, extinction and the importance of saving historic taxonomic literature through projects such as BHL. Folks will also have an opportunity to ask questions about Once There Were Billions, species survival or anything else on your minds about birds or biodiversity.

You can send questions using #Martha100 to @BioDivLibrary, @SILibraries, or @NMNH. Helen will be taking over the @NMNH account and Martin will man @BioDivLibrary to answer your questions. Everyone is invited to participate and follow the discussion by using #Martha100. If you're not on Twitter, feel free to leave your question in a comment below or drop us a line by email at feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org.

BHL joins the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

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The Biodiversity Heritage Library has joined the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) as an Associate Participant. GBIF operates through a network of global nodes to develop and maintain an open data infrastructure for sharing digital biodiversity data. As an Associate Participant, BHL will encourage open access and use of biodiversity data among its stakeholders and actively participate in the implementation of the GBIF Work Programme.

“BHL provides open and free access to over 250 years of biodiversity information via web services and open APIs,” said Martin Kalfatovic, BHL Program Director. “As a growing global consortium of biodiversity-related libraries and through cooperation with other biodiversity institutions, we are constantly working to refine BHL content and services to address the need for biodiversity literature. Through participation in GBIF, BHL will be able to share our own expertise, gain new competencies, and collaborate with new communities to ensure that the breadth of biodiversity knowledge is available to everyone, everywhere.”

GBIF participants include countries, intergovernmental and international organizations, and organizations with an international scope that seek to share data under common standards, inform and implement the GBIF strategic plan, and invest in tools, services, and capacity building within biodiversity information frameworks. To date, over 90 participants have signed the GBIF MOU.

About GBIF
The purpose of GBIF is to promote, co-ordinate, design, enable and implement the compilation, linking, standardization, digitization and global dissemination and use of the world’s biodiversity data, within an appropriate framework for property rights and due attribution. GBIF works in close co-operate with established programmes and organisations that compile, maintain, and use biological information resources. The Participants, working through GBIF, establish and support a distributed information system that enables users to access and utilize considerable quantities of existing and new biodiversity data. Learn more: http://www.gbif.org/.

On the Case: An Internship in Detective Work, Library Style

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Facade, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
My earliest memory of the Natural History Museum is climbing the steps to see the “stuffed animal zoo.” It was a very rainy day and our plans of visiting the National Zoo were put on hold. However, my mom had an idea so that I- only about four or five at the time- could still see animals. I had no idea at the time what exactly she meant by “stuffed animal,” but I had a blast and returned frequently during our yearly trips up from Florida. The stairs seemed so much taller back then. Now they’re just a quick jaunt up to something much more than a place to escape the rain. As the years and visits went by, I found that I did not get bored by the many visits. Instead, I started looking at different aspects of the museum- beyond the educational tags and videos. I started seeing the museum as an entity and watching how much it meant to the different people visiting.

Mammal Hall, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
I completed my undergraduate degree at Florida State University, majoring in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences with a focus on Anthropology and History. I also completed a minor and certificate program in Museum Studies. I am currently working on completing my graduate degree at Catholic University of America in Library Information Science with a focus on Cultural Heritage Information Management.

Being able to work with the Smithsonian Libraries was an amazing experience. I was able to spend the last six weeks working with the Biodiversity Heritage Library as part of the Professional Development Internship Program. Those weeks flew by as I worked on a number of different projects. One of the main projects I worked on had to do with BHL’s issue tracking system, called Gemini. With digital libraries comes an even bigger audience which can lead to even more input. BHL users are able to note problems, questions, or requests that they have with items in the library which are then sent through to the issue tracking system. I was able to help unravel some of the difficult bibliographic questions which were anchored in the age old “what were the publishers thinking?” Bibliographic leg work made me feel as though my librarian skills were taking me down the path of a detective. Except instead of a dark alley I was making my way through the cyber-shelves of OCLC, wandering through different countries’ books to add to my collective knowledge about a title.

Mariah Lewis, BHL Professional Development Intern
While working on different issues in the issue tracking system I was able to make edits to the records in the BHL. After doing cataloging and metadata work in previous internships I found it very interesting to see how that data was stored and edited in a digital library setting. The collaborative effort that went into editing BHL records and answering questions in the Gemini system was incredible. With participating institutions all over the world, communication and team work was indispensable.

Working with BHL was a big change from my previous library work. It was my first time in a library setting not working with books. The transition from working with books and documents in a digitization setting to never seeing a book was not as difficult as I was expecting. I was given first-hand experience working with digital surrogates or- as some would say- totally new digital objects. Beyond this, it was really interesting to see how you can work with people all over the country and world with technology. While that seems obvious, BHL takes this to a different level and really works at having clear communication lines. The collaborative effort was probably the most inspiring part of the internship. I saw how BHL’s work can be used in other aspects of librarianship which complements my library and information science education and gives me hope and ideas for the future of librarianship.

Mariah Lewis
BHL Professional Development Intern

BHL Is Back!

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Access to the BHL website has been restored! Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

A Global Discussion about Martha, Extinction and Conservation

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Thanks to everyone who tuned in for our #Martha100 TwitterChat with @NMNH (National Museum of Natural History) and @SILibraries (Smithsonian Libraries) yesterday! The chat was a commemoration of the death of the last passenger pigeon, Martha (died Sept. 1, 1914), and a discussion on extinction, conservation, and the importance of historic literature to these fields.

We had some fantastic questions and discussions, as well as great contributions from @fieldmuseum, @SmithsonianArch (Smithsonian Archives), @birdernewjersey (aka Rick Wright, a regular guest blogger for BHL), and @SiobhanLeachman (volunteer with the SI Transcription Center).


Over 350 people participated in the conversation, which produced over 770 tweets seen by over 1.8 million people! BHL saw a 66% increase in the reach of our tweets and a 240% increase in engagement with users on Twitter during the event as compared with our average daily reach and engagements. This translates to a 92% increase in clicks on links, a 117% increase in retweets, a 103% increase in favorites, and a 650% increase in replies. We also saw an increase in our audience, with a 422% increase in Twitter followers compared to our average daily increase.



For a quick snapshot of the conversation, take a look at some of our favorite questions and answers from the TwitterChat:

Q1: @SILibraries: Who was Martha and what is a passenger pigeon?
Answers:
@NMNH: The Passenger Pigeon is an extinct North American pigeon + Martha, the last individual alive, died 9/1/1914
@SILibraries: Passenger Pigeons lived only in North America. @eol has range maps http://ow.ly/B23u5
@BioDivLibrary: Learn more about how the passenger pigeon went extinct http://ow.ly/B25az
@SmithsonianArch: Martha was named after George Washington's wife!
@SILibraries: Some flocks were thought to contain over 2 billion birds, taking days to pass by.
@SILibraries: How did passenger pigeon get its name? From French passenger, which means to pass by.
@Fezook: Was depletion of numbers below that necessary for migration a main cause of passenger pigeon extinction?
@NMNH: essentially yes; numbers declined because of hunting + habitat loss. They were highly social, probably couldn't survive in low numbers.
@BioDivLibrary: Passenger Pigeon may have survived commercial slaughter if nesting grounds not destroyed too http://ow.ly/B24Pa

Mark Catesby's 1754 illustration of the Passenger Pigeon is thought to be the first published depiction of the species. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. v. 1. 1754. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/10900155
Q2: @SILibraries: How fast are we losing species?
Answers:
@BioDivLibrary: Recent estimates say by as much as 1000x the natural rate http://ow.ly/B21uY
@SILibraries: This article from @SmithsonianMag says 75% of species extinct in next century http://ow.ly/B21Im
@BioDivLibrary: Among terrestrial vertebrates: 322 species extinct since 1500. 25% average decline http://ow.ly/B21ZA
@ROMbiodiversity: and they've just announced it might be worse http://ow.ly/B227Z

Q3: @SiobhanLeachman: Was wondering if it was the advent of railroads that helped allow extinction?
Answers:
@BioDivLibrary: Absolutely! Railroads allowed millions to be shipped each year http://ow.ly/B20pt
@BioDivLibrary: Cheap meat, large supply & easy distribution via railroads fueled PP annihilation
@SiobhanLeachman: Assumed it took hunters to PP as well
@birdernewjersey: Yes hotels sprang up at railroad terminus when pigeons were around to be shot
@BioDivLibrary: Telegraph was another tech allowing hunters to know quickly where PP were roosting

Passenger Pigeon among its relatives. Pycraft, W.P. A Book of Birds. 1908. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13504819

Q4: @SILibraries: What is so important about Taxonomic Literature?
Answers:
@BioDivLibrary: Lit provides record of species and helps scientists identify new species
@BioDivLibrary: Helps track changes in ecosystems & distributions to identify species & habitats to protect
@HsapiensMarissa: Taxonomic lit bridges gaps in understanding of biodiversity concepts so issues can be targeted holistically
@BioDivLibrary: United Nations requires countries to identify/monitor species w/in borders-BHL provides inventories/info
@BioDivLibrary: It also documents extinct species and their life, morphology, and phylogeny
@SILibraries: How does BHL helps scientists in remote countries?
@BioDivLibrary: BHL provides #openaccess to info on species anywhere/everywhere, even if no access to libraries http://ow.ly/B22xt 
@birdernewjersey: Not just in remote countries: I'd hate to go to the library every time I needed to look something up #badolddays

If you missed the chat, or want to see some of the discussions again, you can see the conversations via Storify. Thanks to everyone who participated! It was a great educational and collaborative event!

Learn more about the passenger pigeon and North American bird extinction, and see Martha, the last passenger pigeon, in the joint SIL/BHL exhibit Once There Were Billions at NMNH. Check out images of the Passenger Pigeon and other extinct birds and view Martha's autopsy in BHL.

Be sure to follow BHL on Twitter for more great biodiversity and literature content and information!

Exploring Arachnids with Harry Potter and Logan Pierce

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If you’re a Harry Potter fan, then you know what the three unforgivable curses are. And if you’ve seen the movies, you’ll remember the scene where Mad-eye Moody demonstrates those curses in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. If you’re recalling the scene now, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, he tortured and killed a spider.”

Amblypygid. The Royal Natural History. v. 6, sec. 11 (1896). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/29153712

If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re wrong (if you managed to avoid the Harry Potter craze and have no idea what we’re talking about, just smile and nod with superiority at not being taken in by our leading comment and read on). The subject of Mad-eye’s persecution was, in fact, an Amblypygid.

Sometimes called “whip spiders,” Amblypygids are an invertebrate group belonging to Arachnida but separate from spiders. They have six walking legs, eight eyes, and claw-like, extra long pedipalps modified for grabbing prey and, if you’re a male, fertile females.

Phrynus marginemaculatus from Logan Pierce's collection. Image copyright Logan Pierce. If you would like to reuse the image, contact Logan at @xMiPHISTox or via That Arachnid Keeper for permission.

Spider or not, if you’re like Ron, an Amblypygid sighting would probably provoke shrieks of terror or mad dashes to higher ground (such as atop a trusty chair that a multi-legged critter couldn’t possibly climb…). At the very least, you’re probably not feeling very inspired to seek one out as a pet.

Arachnids (including Amblypygid species Phrynus reniformis). Haeckel, Ernst. Kunstformen der Natur (1904). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/33543560
But if you're Logan Pierce, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

An arachnid enthusiast, Pierce’s love affair with these eight-legged invertebrates began at age nine, when he “picked up a book on scorpions and read it religiously.” At age fourteen, his aunt bought him his first two species (an Emperor scorpion, Pandinus imperator, and a Tarantula labeled as a Rose-Hair, Grammostola species), and he’s been collecting, rearing, and breeding hundreds of arachnids and invertebrates ever since. Today, his collection consists of over 100 specimens, representing 32 species.

When asked why he’s so captivated by arachnids, Pierce responded, “I actually have a slight fascination with their ‘strategies’ concerning prey acquisition. Another interest of mine is the way that scorpions eat their prey, with two smaller ‘claw-like’ structures called chelicerae.”

Through his profile @xMiPHISTox, Pierce recently discovered BHL on twitter thanks to a post we did on an 1841 illustration of the Amblypygid species Phrynus Ceylonicus from Sri Lanka. After engaging in a conversation with him, we learned that not only is he rearing a subadult of another Amblypygid species, Phrynus marginemaculatus, but that he maintains a Tumblr (That Arachnid Keeper) for the purposes of sharing information, care, and breeding logs for the many Arachnid species in his possession.

Amblypygi Tweet. Koch, C.L. Die Arachniden. BD. 8-10 (1841). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/37027845

One of his posts reports Logan’s experience caring for, feeding, and attempting to breed the scorpion species Brachistosternus negrei. Native to Chile, this species is rarely bred successfully in the U.S. On April 18, 2013, Pierce received a shipment of 7 specimens, which he described as “very feisty…When unpacking them and taking them out of their small holding containers I exhaled through my nose, which made one go into a stinging frenzy,” he wrote.

B. negrei from Logan Pierce's collection. Image copyright Logan Pierce. If you would like to reuse the image, contact Logan at @xMiPHISTox or via That Arachnid Keeper for permission.
After sexing his brood by searching for a “Spur” within the inner side of their fixed Pedipalp finger (Spur only present in males), Logan identified 4 females and 3 males – a good ratio for breeding. He relates his two attempts to breed his specimens as follows: “They’re aggressive breeders, and do things akin to Androctonus, such as the male approaching the female, doing what I can only describe as ‘juddering’ until he gets close to the female, in which event he will subdue the female by stinging her once and lock his pedipalps to whatever he’s able to clasp. He will then move his pedipalps from appendage up to the females…lock with them…[and] slowly drag her around, looking for a suitable spot to drop a spermatophore. Females of this species seem to be very finicky, as they’ve ended all mating attempts made by my male, even though they are adults and confirmed females.”

While breeding challenges may be expected, considering it’s an advanced activity that most arachnid-owners probably won’t attempt, even basic nurturing is not without its difficulties. “If someone were to own species such as scorpions with little known information, or almost none, the most challenging part would be procuring information to set up a habitat for them,” said Pierce.

Anatomy of Amblypygi. Pocock, R.I. Arachnida (1900). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/16788845

Logan is also currently grappling with sexing his subadult Amblypygid, which involves knocking the specimen out with CO2, pulling back the genital plate, and searching for a specific formation. A delicate procedure, to say the least. And you thought owning an arachnid would be as simple as feeding it a few crickets now and then…

Have we inspired you to choose an arachnid of your own to care for? If so, “Do your research before acquiring any invertebrate,” cautions Pierce. “I see so many people online throwing caution to the wind whilst purchasing species such as Leiurus quinquestriatus (Deathstalker scorpion), Androctonus australis, and many other highly dangerous species. I would also say that arachnids are generally shelf-pets, and should not be purchased with handling in mind, or with the intent of showing off to friends. Invertebrates can be stressed from excess handling (But this has been debated many times by people), or from bothering them too much. Any invertebrate purchased should be purchased with the intent of observation and possibly preservation.” Get more great insight and information from Logan on That Arachnid Keeper.

Amblypygids. Biologia-Centrali Americana (1879-1915).
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/576412
If you’re not quite ready to make the leap to Arachnid caretaker, you could start by browsing some of the lovely arachnid illustrations in BHL. If you’re feeling too squeamish for that, we hope that at least this post has helped you understand the differences between spiders and Amblypygids. Just because it’s got lots of legs and eyes doesn’t mean it builds a web (…although we’re not sure how much comfort Ron will find in that).

We love the way social media allows us to connect with so many fascinating biodiversity enthusiasts, learn more about earth’s incredibly diverse flora and fauna, and share our own resources in exciting new ways. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, or through a blog comment to tell us about your own biodiversity and research experiences!

Grace Costantino
Outreach and Communication Manager | BHL
* Special thanks to Logan Pierce for sharing his expertise, information, and images with us!

BHL Valued by Historians

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Many people tend to think of BHL as a resource for scientists. While it’s true that scientists use BHL to find species descriptions and data about earth’s flora and fauna, they are not the exclusive beneficiaries of this wealth of knowledge.

BHL contains more than half a millennia's worth of records about the discovery of life on our planet. It is valuable both for the raw data it provides and for the context and history it relates. It is not just a repository of biodiversity information. It also captures the evolution of our understanding, appreciation, and interactions with the natural world.

Dr. Paul Farber, Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Oregon State University.

Dr. Paul Farber is a Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Oregon State University. He has been active in his field since the 1970s, when he received his Ph.D., though his love of the subject first blossomed during his undergrad years. Recently, a colleague asked him to help prepare an 800 page manuscript on the history of nineteenth-century German biology for publication as a book.

“I had read a draft of the manuscript and thought it was absolutely brilliant. Since the person is someone to whom I feel greatly indebted, there was no question that I would do it,” recalls Dr. Farber. “When I began, I came across simple formatting issues (getting the manuscript to conform to the guidelines of the Press that had accepted it). But, then, I discovered there were MANY footnotes that were incomplete. Some of the citations were mere last names and a date. Many references were to fairly obscure journals, and all the names of the journals were just abbreviations (sometimes short versions).”

Decoding such a conundrum of bibliographic references may seem nearly impossible. But thankfully for Dr. Farber, a serendipitous Google search led him to BHL.

“The BHL was like a knight in shining armor, or the cavalry coming over the hill, to rescue me!!” lauds Farber. “I was able to go to complete runs of minor journals and hunt down many references, or use the BHL to find related works, and through their bibliographies get clues as to what I was hunting.”

Thanks to the open, digital nature of BHL, Dr. Farber was able to conduct all of his research locally. “The ability to find full runs of obscure journals makes it possible to work from the Pacific Northwest without traveling to a major library somewhere else,” explains Farber. “Without the BHL the project would have been enormously more difficult. In the future, I will use [it] to locate material and download sources that are not available to me at my university library. It will be a first stop in any future historical research!”

Whether it be a scientist cataloging new species, an artist seeking inspiration from the natural world, a policy maker crafting conversation reform, an historian lecturing in a classroom, or a curious youngster investigating local fauna for the first time, BHL provides a robust knowledge corpus that enables anyone, anywhere to explore a breadth of questions about natural history and biodiversity. 

What will you discover?

Explore BHL and our Flickr today. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about biodiversity and our collections.

Special Thanks to Dr. Paul Farber for providing fascinating insight on the application of BHL within the humanities. Do you have a story to tell about your experience using BHL? Tell us about it by writing to feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org!

BHL-Australia is back!

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The first published illustration of the Duck-billed Platypus, from The Naturalist's Miscellany, or Coloured figures of natural objects, Vol. 10, George Shaw, 1799.

For the past year, BHL-Australia has been very quiet. So quiet, in fact, you would be forgiven for forgetting we exist (unless of course you read about our contribution to the new BHL website).

Why the silence? Because, in 2013, we ran out of funding.

Our digitisation work didn’t stop, however. Deep in the Museum Victoria library, six dedicated volunteers (supervised by equally dedicated library staff) continued to scan and process volumes from our collections and upload them into BHL.

We are now thrilled to announce that BHL-Au is back in full force. Still led by Museum Victoria, we have renewed funding from the Atlas of Living Australia and a new enthusiastic team. And we have grand plans for BHL-Au.

These include:
  • The digitisation of non-published works in our historical collection: Gold Registers, Exhibition Catalogues, Field Diaries and the unbound sections of the Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria
  • The continued digitisation of rare books, starting with those featured in our Art of Science exhibition.
  • The establishment and ongoing support of new BHL partners within museums and herbaria around Australia and in New Zealand. 
  • The strengthening of our existing relationships within the global BHL community. 
The books contributed by Museum Victoria can be viewed on our new Collection page on the BHL website.

    Coming soon to BHL via BHL-Au: Superb Lyrebird, from An account of the English colony in New South Wales, from its first settlement in January 1788 to August 1801, David Collins, 1804.

    Who are BHL-Australia?

    The BHL-Au Team: (from left) Hayley Webster, Ely Wallis, Cerise Howard, Jim Healey, Nicole Kearney. Credit: Simon Sherrin, Museum Victoria.
    Ely Wallis is the Manager of Online Collections at Museum Victoria, the Chair of BHL-Global and the Project Lead for BHL-Australia. Ely is a zoologist by training but now spends her time publishing the museum’s encyclopedic collections onto websites, gallery interactives and to apps.

    Nicole Kearney is the Project Coordinator of BHL-Au. She is a zoologist, science communicator and professional writer/editor. She has worked at Museum Victoria since 2003, most recently on a series of field guide apps. Her position with BHL combines her professional interests with her life-long love of books.

    Cerise Howard is the Digitisation Coordinator for BHL-Au. Occupying various roles at Museum Victoria connected to online publishing over the last ten years, she is also the Artistic Director of the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia (CaSFFA), a writer and broadcaster on film, and a musician with a theatrical bent.

    Hayley Webster is the Manager of the Museum Victoria Library. She has been involved in BHL-Au since 2011, contributing books for digitisation, providing access to the library collection, arranging for books to be treated by our Conservation department, and working with our dedicated team of volunteers.

    Jim Healey has worked for the past two years as a BHL Volunteer and now joins us as the project’s Technical Support Officer. He brings to BHL over 25 years of experience working in IT, as well as a passion for photography and electronics.

    The team also includes five passionate and dedicated BHL Volunteers: Bob Griffith, Heidi Griffith, Sue Halliwell, Alan Nankervis and Tiziana Tizian. All five have been with BHL-Au since February 2012.

    Nicole Kearney
    BHL-Au Project Coordinator

    A Crusade to Save the Golden Lion Tamarin

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    Post by Grace Costantino with significant contributions from Field Book Project blog post, "Field Notes from a Battle Against Extinction," by Sonoe Nakasone.

    We are in the midst of Hispanic Heritage Month, an annual celebration of the "histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America." This is also an excellent opportunity to celebrate Hispanic biodiversity. We're kicking things off with a look at one of Brazil's most iconic primates, the Golden Lion Tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia).


    The Golden Lion Tamarin. Illustrated by Louis Sargent. From: Finn, Frank.
    The Wild Beasts of the World. (v. 1, 1909). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/19058592 

    A small, endangered primate, the Golden Lion Tamarin (GLT) (also known as the Golden or Lion Marmoset) gets its name from the trademark, vivid orange "mane" surrounding its face. Don't let the "lion" part fool you, however. The tamarin averages only 10.3 inches in length and 1.37 lbs.

    In the marvelous book The Wild Beasts of the World (v.1, 1909), Frank Finn, an English ornithologist, writes that the GLT is not much larger than the English squirrel, with "paws" quite unlike "ordinary" monkeys. The accompanying illustration, by Louis Sargent, is a breathtaking representation of this adorable New World Monkey.

    Interestingly, Finn records that"the present species is one of the most widely-ranging of the Marmosets, being found from the Isthmus of Panama to South-eastern Brazil and New Granada." Much has changed since the early 1900s. Today, GLTs have extremely limited distribution, confined solely to Brazil, and occupying only 2-5% of their original habitat. In the 1970s, fewer than 200 GLTs remained on Earth. Thanks to conservation efforts, led largely by Dr. Devra Kleiman, who passed away in 2010, their wild population is now closer to 1,600.

    The Field Book Project has cataloged a number of Kleiman's fieldbooks, many focusing on her research with the GLT. Sonoe Nakasone, who cataloged the books and published a blog post about them, noted that Kleiman's notes were quite different from those of many other researchers she had cataloged in the past, as:
    Kleiman didn’t really “collect specimens”. Rather, her notes document animal behavior, activities, diet, as well as external factors affecting the livelihood of tamarins. Kleiman and her team did collect blood, skin, and fur samples, and they did capture tamarins to breed in captivity before reintroducing them into the wild, yet the fundamental purpose and method of research was distinct from traditional natural history field work.
    Devra Kleiman and colleague conducting playback study. From the Field Book Project.

    Kleiman's fieldbooks also document a number of her research techniques. She employed three common protocols:
    Scans, focals, and playbacks. Scans and focals are systematic observations. Scans focus on all member of a group of animals; focals focus on an individual animal. Both adhere to specific lengths of time and seek specific information about behavior and activities. Playbacks involved projecting recordings of various animal vocalizations in the field. During these experiments, animal responses, if any, were documented and differences between male and female responses noted.
    Nakasone also highlights some of the challenges Kleiman faced during her conservation initiatives:
    On October 25, 1991, Kleiman remembers a particularly difficult visit to a corporation: “the veep [VP] we meet is very obnoxious—suggesting that people are burned out [with] ecology (mentions a t-shirt entitled “I don’t give a s--- about the GLT)”. On March 16, 1990, Kleiman notes the effects of economic instability in Brazil on the project: “they are freezing all interest-bearing overnight accounts [...]. Cecilia [Kleiman’s colleague] had $6000 WWF grant in an overnight account. It increased by $1000 interest, but now she can’t touch it.”
    Yet despite these and other obstacles like deforestation, poaching, and political instability, Kleiman coordinated the Golden Lion Tamarin Conservation Program for almost 30 years and "was successful at shedding light on the issue of golden lion tamarins and helping to increase the GLT population by 800%." As Nakaone notes:
    Kleiman’s field books are a refreshing and exhilarating alternative to many of her predecessor’s field books because she was a pioneer in the burgeoning field of conservation biology. Her notes reflect not only the advancement of human knowledge, but also the application of that knowledge to ensure the livelihood of species struggling for survival.
    "Participants in the Front Royal Conference on Mammalian Behavior, 16-19 August 1980."
    Kleiman 2nd row, 2nd from right.

    Learn more about Kleiman's contributions to conservation and biodiversity sciences from the Smithsonian Archives. Explore the GLT in The Wild Beasts of the World, and learn more about the species in EOL. Read Sonoe Nakasone's full blog post and explore Kleiman's fieldbooks, cataloged by the Field Book Project

    Visitors from Paradise: The Paradiseidae

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    Deep within the rainforest canopy of the Aru Islands, just west of New Guinea, two male Greater Birds-of-Paradise dance among the branches in carefully coordinated steps, their magnificent yellow, white, and maroon plumage undulating gracefully to the rhythm of their own unique song.


    Carl Linnaeus named this species Paradisaea apoda, meaning "legless bird-of-paradise." The misnomer was based on early trade-skins prepared and shipped to Europe without feet, feeding a notion that these "visitors from paradise" glided endlessly through the air, remaining aloft until death.

    Naturalist and explorer Alfred Russel Wallace (who simultaneous to Darwin developed the concept of evolution by means of natural selection), spent extensive time in the Aru Islands during the mid-1800s, collecting and describing many species, including P. apoda. Upon receiving a specimen, Wallace declared the bird"the most perfectly lovely of the many lovely productions of nature," but lamented that, should "civilized man" ever reach these "virgin forests," he would surely disturb nature's balance and cause the creature's extinction.

    Paradisaea apoda. Elliot, Giraud Daniel. A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.
    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44792765 
    Daniel Giraud Elliot, one of the most important American ornithologists and naturalists of the nineteenth century, was enthralled with Wallace's work, and his descriptions of birds of paradise. While Wallace was not the first western naturalist to see Birds-of-Paradise in the wild (a distinction held by René Primevère Lesson during the 1822-25 circumnavigation voyage of the French La Coquille), his accounts are poetic and highly detailed. They provided inspiration for one of Elliot's crown-jewels, A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.

    Epimachus ellioti (named after Elliot). Elliot, Giraud Daniel. A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.
    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44792854
    Born in 1835, Elliot achieved many prestigious accomplishments over his lifetime. In 1869, he became one of the scientific founders of the American Museum of Natural History (for which his personal collection of North American birds comprised some of the museum's first accessioned specimens). In 1894, Elliot became the curator of the Department of Zoology for the Field Museum of Natural History. He also traveled extensively, often for years at a time, and published hundreds of papers and multiple monographs relating his findings and experiences. These considerable accomplishments are even more impressive considering Elliot's limited formal education.

    While Elliot produced many works on mammals, his true passion was birds. He became famous for his monographs on bird families, which summarized previous taxonomic information about the species included, while also providing new observations and analysis based on his travels and museum specimens. He used his own wealth and formidable connections with elite European contacts to finance these publications.

    Cicinnurus regius. Elliot, Giraud Daniel. A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.
    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44792836
    A Monograph of the Paradiseidae, published in London in 1873, is a large folio with 37 lithographs (36 of which are hand-colored) detailing typical Bird-of-Paradise species from the Paradiseae family, as well as members of the Epimachinae (now Epimachus genus) and Tectonarchinae (now Ptilonorhynchidae) families. His fourth illustrated monograph, Elliot chose the Birds-of-Paradise as his subject in order to finally present a "correct idea" of the birds' appearance. At the time of his writing, quality specimens were finally making their way to Europe, replacing the "mutilated" skins that naturalists has previously relied upon. Elliot also acknowledges the contributions of Prof. Schlegel from the Museum at Leyden, John Gould, and M.J.P. Verreaux, all of whom allowed him to examine their own specimens to inform his publication.

    The original watercolor paintings on which Paradiseidae's lithographs are based were created by German artist Joseph Wolf, who also executed work for David Livingstone, Henry Walter Bates, John Gould (think the incredible Birds of Asia masterpiece), and Wallace himself. Of Wolf, Elliot wrote, "The drawings of Mr. Wolf will, I am sure, receive the admiration of those who see them; for, like all that artist's productions, they cannot be surpassed, if equalled, at the present time." The lithography for the work was performed by Joseph Smit, with coloration undertaken by John Douglas White.

    Cicinnurus respublica. Elliot, Giraud Daniel. A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.
    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44792828
    Elliot's regard for Wallace cannot be mistaken. For the book's dedication, he writes,"To Alfred Russel Wallace, whose fame as a traveler is only eclipsed by that which he has gained as a naturalist; and to whom we are indebted for nearly all our authentic information regarding the habits of the many species of the Birds of Paradise."

    Elliot's A Monograph of the Paradiseidae is one of the "most admired bird books ever produced." As a commodity, it is also very valuable, fetching a hefty $45,924 USD price tag at a 2007 Christie's auction. Thanks to the Smithsonian Libraries, however, you can view and download this book for free in BHL.

    The digitized Smithsonian copy comes from the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, which holds the Smithsonian's collection of over 10,000 rare books in anthropology and the natural sciences. The full collection of illustrations can also be found in the BHL Flickr.

    Paradisaea raggiana. Elliot, Giraud Daniel. A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.
    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44792727
    Today, there are 41 recognized species of birds of paradise. They are all found almost exclusively in New Guinea and its satellites, with a few exceptions in the Maluku Islands and eastern Australia. Fortunately, Wallace's prophecy has not come true. The Greater Bird of Paradise is common throughout its range, evaluated as a species of "least concern" by the IUCN. Currently, only 3 of the 41 recognized species are listed as "threatened": Wahnes's Parotia, the Blue Bird of Paradise, and the Black Sicklebill. Several are "near-threatened," however, and hunting and habitat loss continues to be a concern.

    As you enjoy the spectacular Paradiseidae illustrations, remember that awareness is a key component in conservation. We can all play a part in mitigating factors that contribute to species loss. And a tax-deductible gift to BHL can help us continue to provide scientists with the information they need to identify and protect our biodiversity. Let's ensure that these beautiful birds are here for generations to come!

    Seleucidis melanoleucus. Elliot, Giraud Daniel. A Monograph of the Paradiseidae.
    http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44792862
    By Grace Costantino
    Outreach and Communication Manager | Biodiversity Heritage Library

    Some Reflections on Social Media and Society

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    What are the impact and implications of social media on society?

    This question was the fundamental discussion point of the Social Media and Society 2014 conference in Toronto, Canada, Sept. 27-28, 2014. Now in its fifth year, the conference, organized by the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University (a partner in the Mining Biodiversity project funded by the IMLS Digging Into Data Challenge, of which BHL is also a participant), brings together researchers and practitioners across a broad range of social media related fields to discuss current research and best practices in social media, as well as its application to society at large.

    BHL Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace Costantino, was invited to attend the conference. As the manager of BHL's social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, blog, Flickr, Pinterest), she was eager to connect with other professionals, discover current trends, and investigate best practices and new directions for BHL social media.

    The conference discussed a variety of topics, including social media's effect on relationships and voice; differences among genders in social media participation; privacy; deciphering influence within social media; social media as a marketing platform; use of social media within science communication; how scholars use social networks; and altmetrics.

    Several interesting findings and further questions emerged within these topics.

    From Keith Hampton's talk. Social Media and cloud computing are as revolutionary (and for some scary) as electricity was in the past.
    Keith Hampton, keynote speaker for day one, related his research regarding social media's effect on relationships, voice, and gender. Common lore asserts that extensive adoption of social media results in increased alienation and more fleeting relationships within society. Conversely, Hampton's research found that social media results in more persistent relationships and an increased awareness of the activities of one's social ties through digital technology.

    Along another avenue of research involving social media and politics, Hampton found that social media does not make people more inclined to engage in political conversations online. While 86% of surveyed participants expressed a willingness to discuss a political topic offline, only 42% were willing to share their opinions online, and only .3% said they were willing to discuss them online but not offline. The reason for this may be the persistent nature of social media; once an opinion is voiced, it is very difficult to erase it. People were also more willing to share when they believed that their network of followers were sympathetic to their viewpoints.

    Finally, in regards to stress and social media, Hampton found that women who use social media felt less psychological stress but more social stress, while men generally did not display any correlation between social media use and stress (though they may feel some social stress when hearing about a friend's demotion or interaction with a crime).

    One panel within the conference presented research investigating the facets of influence within social media, and how to identify influential users. The general definition of influence in this context was those individuals most likely to disperse information within a network. Elizabeth Dubois of the Oxford Internet Institute proposed four facets of influence (popularity, interaction, knowledge, and social embeddedness), and depending on the facet used, different influencers emerged. Weiai Xu of the University of Buffalo found that opinion leaders on Twitter are generally those most connected and involved. K. Hazel Kwon of Arizona State University also found that people were more likely to share or engage with a topic or event that many of their friends also followed, suggesting that anonymity (once touted as a benefit of online interactions) is detrimental to increasing awareness via social media.

    The discussion on privacy and social media raised many good questions for researchers and practitioners. How much privacy should users expect on social media, particularly in regards to their public tweets being retweeted or shared via media outlets? This discussion was largely centered around the @SteenFox "What Were you Wearing" debate. Twitter is a public platform, but the speakers noted that a full awareness of the "public" nature of public tweets was sometimes lacking among users. The thought-provoking question of "are hashtags the antithesis to an expectation of privacy," given that by their use you join a very public, sometimes global conversation outside of your own network, was raised by Siobhan O'Flynn from the University of Toronto. The main take-away from the panel was that more education is needed regarding what privacy means in social media.

    Interesting particularly for BHL were the discussions regarding the role of Twitter in science topics and scholars' use of social media. Moritz David Buchi of the University of Zurich presented on "How does the representation of science topics differ between news and tweets?" He found that, in general, news outlets were more objective while tweets were more dramatic. Science tweets are also largely not intended to be self-contained, but instead linked to larger news articles. These tweets also operated mostly on a broadcasting model, involving little dialogue. Retweets were most prominent, producing a diffusion of knowledge effect.

    Two separate panels discussed scholars' use of social media. Anabel Quan-Haase, Kim Martin, and Lori Mccay-Peet found three main motives for social media use among scholars: information gathering; collaboration; and socializing and information dissemination. Bonnie Stewart found that scholars participated in social media to voice an opinion and contribute to a discussion, though traditional "power factors" like institutional affiliation affected how well these voices were heard. George Veletsianos of Royal Roads University found that while scholars use social media for knowledge creation (like crowdsourcing) and dissemination, they still struggle with issues of copyright restrictions; negotiating personal and professional boundaries; and a lack of frameworks in academia to evaluate the legitimacy of networked activities, which results in pressure to engage in traditional outreach and dissemination activities. Related to this was a presentation by Heidi Julien from the University of Buffalo, which discussed the use of almetrics (alternatives to the traditional journal impact factor and personal citation indices) to inform tenure decisions. Her experience shows that institutions are still a long way from incorporating altmetrics into these decisions.

    Richard Naples of Smithsonian Libraries, with his poster.
    BHL partner Smithsonian Libraries also presented a poster at the conference entitled "The GIF That Keeps on Giving," by Richard Naples. The poster presents the library's use of animated GIFs in Tumblr, and the increased exposure and reach that this "culture remix" enables. Many of the GIFs are from books digitized for BHL.

    Overall, the conference was an excellent learning and engagement opportunity, with many applications for BHL. Ms. Costantino developed a better understanding of the types of posts users are more likely to engage with; how better to craft social media campaigns around storytelling to excite curiosity; why scholars (one of BHL's core audiences) are using social media and what they hope to find via these outlets; how to better understand, track, and engage with BHL's online community; and how to help contribute to the case for altmetrics.



    The BHL Outreach and Communication Manager position, and this conference attendance, are made possible in part through funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Grant number LG-00-14-0032-14).

    Hispanic Heritage Month: The Life and Work of Louis Agassiz Fuertes

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    Louis Agassiz Fuertes. The Osprey. v. 1 (1896-97). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8767127 
    The artwork of Puerto Rican-American Louis Agassiz Fuertes has been featured a fewtimesbefore on the BHL blog. His paintings are beautiful and eye-catching, and always a treat to visit. Through titles available in BHL, we can even see the evolution of Fuertes’s career— from his earliest professional work to his last.

    The Ithaca-born ornithologist and artist often drew as a young child, sketching domestic animals and wild birds alike. Earliest recording of his painting birds was at the age of 14 when he was determined to capture the unusual beak of a Red Crossbill. At a young age, his work started to garner him some notoriety with professors at Cornell and the local community, even resulting in an exhibit hosted by the local Christian Association. By 17 he’d even become an Associate Member of the American Ornithologists Union.

    However, when he entered Cornell University, Fuertes’s career was still in question. At the time there weren’t any courses in ornithology at Cornell, and his father (despite urgings from his peers) at first did not see how his son’s artistic leanings could provide a suitable life. As a result, Fuertes took courses in architecture.

    It was a chance meeting that changed everything. On a trip to Washington, D.C. with the Cornell University Glee Club, Fuertes met with a friend’s uncle. This uncle just happened to be ornithologist Elliot Coues, a founding member of the American Ornithologists Union.

    Nest of Western Gnatcatcher. A-Birding on a Bronco. (1896) http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12789735
    Coues recognized Fuertes’s potential, and provided him with advice and material support to encourage his scientific and artistic pursuits. It was clear Fuertes was to become a professional painter of birds, and after college he studied under naturalist and artist Abbott H. Thayer. The two would become quite close, even so far as considering one another family.

    Some of Fuertes’s earliest artwork can be found in publications for Cornell University. However his first professional illustrations were printed in A-birding on a Bronco (1896) by Florence Merriam Bailey, published just one year before Fuertes graduated from Cornell. The pen-and-ink drawings mark the start of a career that would eventually have Fuertes in high demand. Although considered his early works, it is clear Fuertes’s youthful sketching had paid off, resulting in a well-developed style demonstrated in detailed images of birds, their nests, and the surrounding flora.

    The Little Lover. A-Birding on a Bronco. (1896) http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12789693
    It's no surprise that Coues would write to The Osprey to note: “[My] examination of a great many of his designs, both in black-and-white and in natural colors, makes me think Mr. Fuertes the most promising young artist of birds now living, and one whose work already places him in the very first rank.”

    It’s an interesting look at the early period of Fuertes’s thirty-year career, during which he would become, not just a prolific artist, but a well-liked and admired colleague and professor. His contemporaries would note his kind, light-hearted nature, and his lectures at Cornell would garner a full house at attention. In the tradition of 19th-century professors who considered themselves poets, Albert W. Smith would recite a memorial poem about Fuertes wherein he says, “under touches of his magic brush,/The canvass [sic] came alive.” Smith would go on to say:

    All children knew at once he was their friend;
    All men and women felt his lasting charm.
    He loved all lovely things that love men’s hearts;
    And when he found new beauty, lo, he turned
    To share it with some friend. 

    His kind nature would extend to how he treated his specimens, one account noting how he would stroke and coo at a recently shot bird. This love of birds and sympathetic nature are often repeated in articles and obituaries written about him.

    In the end Louis shared the natural beauty of the world not just with those around him, but with the general public who had a growing interest in the natural world. His final contributions were the paintings for Album of Abyssinian Birds and Mammals (1930), the originals of which managed to survive unscathed in the car accident which killed Fuertes in 1927. Many publications which feature Fuertes’s artwork remain available to the public, dozens of which are offered through the BHL

    - Adriana Marroquin | Digital Exhibits Coordinator

    This blog post is a preview of two upcoming Biodiversity Library Exhibitions on women naturalists, and Latino natural history. The exhibitions are sponsored by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, and will highlight several women and Latino naturalists represented in the BHL collection.

    Using Data to Improve BHL Social Media

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    How can data analysis help us improve our social media activities?

    This was the fundamental question BHL's Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace Costantino, sought to address during her two-day meeting with Ryerson University's Social Media Lab, Sept. 29-30, 2014. As co-participants in the Mining Biodiversity Digging Into Data project, BHL has been collaborating virtually with Dr. Anatoliy Gruzd, the Lab's Director, since early 2014. The Social Media and Society 2014 conference, organized by the Lab, offered an ideal opportunity for Ms. Costantino and Dr. Gruzd to meet in person and explore BHL's social network using tools developed by the Lab.

    Analyzing BHL's Twitter Network via Netlytic


    The Social Media Lab studies how social media and web 2.0 technologies affect society, communication, and information dissemination. The research team has developed several tools to analyze and visualize social networks. One such tool, Netlytic, is a free cloud-based app that uses public APIs to analyze social media conversations to help community managers discover trending topics, growth, conversation reach, and influential participants. Current supported datasources include Twitter, Facebook, groups and pages, Instagram posts and YouTube comments.

    During the meeting, Ms. Costantino and Dr. Gruzd used Netlytic to analyze BHL's Twitter network, capturing conversations originated by or occurring about BHL. Since analysis was just initiated, Twitter API limitations restricted data capture to conversation occurring on or after 9/22/2014.

    Netlytic reports uncover popular words within conversations, which can be grouped to display popular topics. They also present the entire network as a visualized cluster that displays the connections and conversations among participants.

    Keyword analysis revealed that, not surprisingly, "biodiversity" and "species" were two of the most popular words occurring in recent BHL-related conversations. Also not surprising were the terms "open access" and "smsociety14" (the hashtag for the Social Media and Society conference). Other popular words, however, include "beer,""birds," and "images." Netlytic allows you to delve deeper into each word occurrence, listing the related tweets. An investigation of "beer" revealed that Oktoberfest is a popular topic among people following or discussing BHL content. "Images" confirmed what our observational analysis already told us - people love our illustrations (evidenced by the overwhelming success of Flickr).

    Popular words in tweets from the BHL Twitter network.

    The appearance of "birds" might suggest that we have more bird-lovers among our followers. However, review of the related tweets showed that we published a good deal of material about birds over the past week and a half, including our Birds of Paradise blog post, some tweets about Florence Bailey's bird books, and a retweet of PenAndFeather's post on BHL's Album de Aves Amazonicas.

    Twitter networks posting the most tweets within our BHL network of tweets from or about BHL.

    An analysis of the participants in our network revealed that 373 Twitter accounts (represented as nodes in the visualization) have posted content about us since 9/22/2014, with 858 "ties" (or links between participants, meaning that they engaged in some sort of interaction with each other about BHL, through either @mentions, @replies, or retweets).

    Visualization of the BHL twitter network.

    A deeper analysis of the network uncovers who is talking to whom and what they're talking about. The network visualization is based on clusters, and nodes within the cluster are linked to other nodes via lines that indicate interactions. A single line from one node to another represents a one-sided conversation, i.e. one account tweeted a message that includes a mention of the connected account. When nodes are looped together (a line connects one node, and in turn that node is connected back to the first with another line), this indicates dialogue between the nodes. One account mentions another, and that account in turn mentions the first. These lines can either have an indegree or outdegree centrality value. If an outdegree value, it means that the selected node (i.e. Twitter account) mentioned the connected node. Indegree indicates that the selected node was mentioned by the connected account.

    For instance, BHL's node has a strong indegree centrality, meaning that we are mentioned in other people's tweets more often than we mention other people in a tweet. During this period, we were mentioned by 343 Twitter users. This is largely accounted for by retweets. Our node operates largely on a broadcasting model, where we publish information that is disseminated by others via retweets. This is obvious visually as the "BioDivLibrary" dot is larger than the surrounding dots in the image below, and in general all nodes tie back to ours. However, we mentioned 82 different Twitter accounts as well during this time period, indicating that we are engaging in dialogue with our users regularly.

    Network of Tweets published by us or including our handle.

    The closer a node is to the more concentrated part of the cluster, the more connections it has within the network, or the more people within the network that the user is interacting with. Nodes stretching far outside the hub of the network often only have a single tie within the cluster, meaning they are not highly engaged in our community.

    Spike accounted for by popular "International Coffee Day" and "Fashionista" tweets. 

    Netlytic is also useful for discovering conversations occurring about BHL that we might be unaware of. All of the nodes within the main group of clusters include either @BioDivLibrary, "Biodiversity Heritage Library," or #BHLib in the tweet. These are conservations that we can easily track and follow via Twitter. However, the @BiodiversityNew network includes interactions among users that don't include #BHLib, @BioDivLibrary, or "Biodiversity Heritage Library" in their tweets. Instead, they include links that resolve back to our blog posts. There is no easy way to discover this conversation in Twitter, but thanks to Netlytic, we can not only find it but engage with the participants in that node and encourage them to follow us.

    @BiodiversityNew network involving posts resolving back to the BHL blog

    So What?


    A community manager can spend hours (days!) analyzing a network, discovering users and related conversations. But how can this help us improve our social media efforts?


    1. Trending vs. Long-Term Analysis: Since we've only recently started tracking BHL's Twitter via Netlytic, we have a limited range of data available for analysis. However, the longer we track our network, the more data we will have to work with. This will allow us to get a more accurate picture of our network and answer questions that require longitudinal study and long-range data. 
      1. Who are all the players interacting with us? Some users who might regularly engage with us may not have been active during the period analyzed, and thus are not captured as part of our network. 
      2. What topics are consistently popular among our users? Terms like "beer" were popular now because of Oktoberfest, but likely will not remain so. 
      3. What is the true size of our network, and is it showing growth? Furthermore, when we see rapid growth, we can investigate the content we published and the most active users in our network during that period to discover what and who is influential in regards to our growth. 
      4. However, it is still useful to capture trends so that we can publish event-specific, time-relevant content. Netlytic allows you to limit your analysis to a particular time period, allowing us to see what topics we should be publishing about now (based on trends) vs. regularly (based on longitudinal study). 
    2. Audience-Informed Content: In general, an analysis of popular keywords allows us to see what resonates most with our users. This will allow us to better craft our posts to satisfy the appetite of our network.
    3. Is our Community Stable and Loyal? Analyzing the users that engage with us over time can help us see not only whether we see new users participating (showing network growth), but whether existing users continue to interact with us. We want to grow a stable, dedicated community that consistently helps to promote our content. If we do not see strong follower loyalty, we will need to compare our content and tone to those popular among our users and tweak our strategies accordingly.
    4. Discover New Conversations and Communities: As explained earlier, Netlytic can help us discover conversations occurring about us that we are otherwise unaware of. We can also identify new communities with an interest in our material but as yet unengaged with our brand. Engaging in these conversations and networks will help us grow our audience.
    5. Discover Influencers and Collaborators: Network analysis can also help us see which users are most connected with other users, particularly with a strong inbound centrality. These users are reaching many other users and successfully inspiring engagement. These are important relationships for us to cultivate as these individuals may represent our most influential advocates. BHL also actively collaborates with other nodes. Network analysis will help us see whether these collaborations are reaching new and expanding audiences. We should increase collaborations with those demonstrating the greatest growth and connections. For those lacking such indicators, it may be appropriate to shift effort elsewhere. 
    6. Convert Outliers to Champions: As mentioned, nodes furthest removed from a network's concentrated center are least-engaged in the community but have demonstrated interest in our content. These users may also represent people with access to communities we do not yet engage with. We should strategically engage with select users in these categories to encourage further investment in our community, which may lead to advocates in new communities. 
    7. Less Broadcasting, more Conversation: The Social Media and Society Conference revealed that science-related Twitter accounts often operate on a broadcasting model. They are disseminators of information, but not strong facilitators of dialogue. Within the BHL network, we see a bias towards broadcasting, but many looped ties were present, indicating that we are actively engaging with our users. One of our outreach goals is to foster and promote a dialogue among ourselves, researchers, librarians, citizen scientists, and bioinfomaticians. This requires us to engage with more users, using the strategies outlined above. Continual analysis of our network will reveal if we are being successful and indicate when new strategies are necessary.

    It's a brave new world of social media analysis. Emerging tools allow us to discover our networks, engage with our users, and refine our strategies like never before. As BHL continues to collaborate with The Social Media Lab and analyze our social networks (Twitter is just the beginning), we will improve our ability to tell people why biodiversity is unbelievably awesome!

    - Grace Costantino | BHL Outreach and Communication Manager

    The BHL Outreach and Communication Manager position, and this meeting attendance, are made possible in part through funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Grant number LG-00-14-0032-14).


    Smithsonian Libraries hosts Biodiversity Library Exhibition Training

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    Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Women's Committee awarded a one-year grant to Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) to build online exhibitions to showcase the scientific and historical contributions of Women and Latino naturalists and illustrators. The project, entitled Notable Women and Latinos in Natural History, will draw from content in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and use the Biodiversity Library Exhibition (BLE) platform developed by BHL Europe.

    As part of this project, SIL hosted a workshop on the BLE platform on 22-26 September 2014.

    Workshop participants, clockwise from left foreground:
    Laurel Byrnes, Bianca Crowley, Jiri Frank, and Adriana Marroquin

    On September 22, BHL Program Manager Carolyn Sheffield kicked off the meeting with an introduction to the Notable Women and Latinos project and an overview of the goals for the week.  Jiři Frank, of the National Museum of Prague and a developer of the BLE, presented an overview of the platform and then provided an in-depth demonstration of how to design exhibits in BLE.

    Over the next three days, Jiři led a hands-on workshop that provided an opportunity for the project's Digital Exhibition Coordinators, Adriana Marroquin and Laurel Byrnes, to build experience working directly in BLE. BHL staff, including Grace Costantino, Bianca Crowley, and Joel Richard, also attended portions of the workshop to gain familiarity with the platform.

    All in all, it was a highly successful workshop with Adriana and Laurel creating preliminary versions of the exhibitions that they will build for the Smithsonian Women's Committee project. On the last day of the workshop, SIL staff were invited to attend a demonstration of the BLE platform and to provide feedback on the initial designs that were compiled over the last couple of days. Both Adriana and Laurel received valuable feedback and there was some great discussion at the end. At least one attendee expressed interest in contributing additional content to existing exhibits or creating new ones.

    We extend a big thank you to Jiři Frank for lending all of his time and experience to making the workshop a great success and kudos to Adriana and Laurel on the impressive progress that they made over the course of the week! We are also very grateful for the support from the Smithsonian Women's Committee that made this possible, and we look forward to seeing these digital exhibitions take shape over the next couple of months!


    Biodiversity Heritage Library staff attend the 7th Annual Global Plants meeting in Panama

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    BHL Program Director Martin Kalfatovic and Harvard Botany Librarian Judy Warnement attended the 7th Annual Global Plants meeting. Chuck Miller (Missouri Botanical Garden) serves on the GPI Steering Committee. The Global Plants Initiative, originally sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, has provided funding for the digitization of herbarium specimens and related materials that are made available via the JSTOR Global Plants platform.

    David Cantrill (left)
    and Chuck Miller (right)
    JSTOR Global Plants/GPI provides a worldwide audience with invaluable access to botanical information. BHL member institutions (New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Natural History Museum, London, and the Smithsonian Institution) have contributed herbarium and other data to JSTOR Plants/GPI since its inception.

    Key topics at the meeting included methods to achieve sustainability in the post-Mellon environment; performing gap analyses to see which areas of botany are underrepresented; partnerships with other biodiversity organizations; and reports from participants' projects. The meeting brought together nearly 150 people from 39+ countries.

    Sofie De Smedt, Belgium
    Poster sessions were interesting and informative. Illustrations from BHL were featured in a number of the posters. At left is a poster from Sofie De Smedt from the Botanic Garden Meise (Belgium) which included BHL illustrations.

    Kalfatovic & Warnement in
    Parque Nacional Soberanía
    From Global BHL, Geoffrey Mwachala (National Museums of Kenya) and Serena Lee (Singapore Botanic Garden) participated. The meeting provided plenty of opportunities to meet with users of BHL. As always, it was gratifying to hear that BHL has become a key resource for taxonomists and other biodiversity researchers. Opportunities for socializing included a dinner at the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal and another in the Casco Antiguo (the old part of Panama City that overloops the Bay of Panama and the Pacific mouth of the canal). There were also excursions to Parque Natural Metropolitano (Metropolitan Natural Park), a large rainforest park in the middle of Panama City; and Parque Nacional Soberanía (Soberania National Park).

    In addition to some amazing flora and invertebrates, we spotted toucans, turtles, frogs, howler monkeys, and an agouti (Dasyprocta punctataor) or two.
    Parque Nacional Soberanía

    Parque Nacional Soberanía


    Parque Nacional Soberanía
    Geoffrey Mwachala (left) and
    Rusty Russell (Smithsonian, right)

    Parque Natural Metropolitano
    - Martin Kalfatovic | BHL Program Director

    Exploring the Rich History of Plant Science

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    Drawings of a grapevine stem showing the transport vessels, from Nehemiah Grew's The Anatomy of Plants (1682).
    In 1682, the first known microscopic depiction of pollen appeared in Nehemiah Grew’s Anatomy of Plants. Grew, now known as the “Father of Plant Anatomy,” revolutionized botanical science with his studies of plant structure. Exploiting the power of the microscope, he outlined key morphological differences in plant stems and roots and proposed the hypothesis that stamens are a plant’s male reproductive organs.

    Science has progressed significantly since the 17th century. Microscopes are no longer novel but commonplace, and scientists occupy their minds with theories about dark matter and quarks. Yet despite the centuries that have elapsed, today’s advances are founded squarely on the discoveries of these bygone eras. Likewise, modern theories often cause us to re-examine assumptions from the past.

    Dr. Mary Williams is particularly drawn to this interplay between historic and modern scientific study, specifically in the field of botany. Dr. Williams has been studying and educating people about plants since she began her PhD in Plant Molecular Biology 30 years ago. Serving as a professor at Harvey Mudd College from 1995-2009, Dr. Williams is now a Features Editor for the American Society of Plant Biologists, writing a series of educational articles about plant biology called “Teaching Tools in Plant Biology.” The series connects advanced undergraduate students to current research in plant sciences through textbook-style review articles, diagrams and images.

    Mary Williams demonstrating the size of giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). 

    A comprehensive biological education is not just about current research, however. “Educating students about science involves more than teaching them our current models,” explains Dr. Williams. “We also have to help them learn to synthesize information and develop their own models. One way to do this is by asking them to examine how our ideas and understanding have changed with time. As an example, students can read Vegetable Staticks published in 1727 by Stephen Hales, who is considered one of the pioneers of plant physiology. This book is an account of his studies of water transport in plants. In spite of having only simple tools he made key discoveries and developed models that are still useful.”

    Investigations into the forces and nature of xylem sap, from "Vegetable Staticks," published in 1727 by Stephen Hales

    BHL has become an important resource for satisfying Dr. Williams’ need for historic botanical literature. Some serendipitous Google searching in 2012 brought her to several digitized classics in the BHL collection, which has since transformed into monthly searches for materials. BHL’s Twitter account, @BioDivLibrary, has also proven helpful for uncovering hidden gems in the collection. Dr. Williams includes links to relevant material and images in her teaching articles.

    “BHL makes great scientific works available for students to explore,” lauds Williams. “It can be both fascinating and challenging to see how early scientists conducted experiments and described their results. I particularly like to direct students to “The Power of Movement in Plants”, written by Charles Darwin and his son Francis. Reading it reveals how these exceptional scientists first observe a phenomenon and then set out to understand it. Their investigations of phototropic movement of Phalaris canariensis are brilliant studies that set the stage for the discovery of the plant hormone auxin.”

    Providing access to historic literature isn’t the only thing that makes BHL an important resource for Dr. Williams. The diversity and openness of the collection are equally important. “I wrote an article about medicinal plants and was able to draw on BHL for access to dozens of books from across the world and across the ages. Also, the fact that many of the resources are in the public domain makes them easier to share.”

    The ability to see the primary sources as they were originally published is another of Williams’ favorite BHL qualities. “Although it would be possible to learn from a transcribed document, somehow seeing the original publications with the old type and especially the old drawings has so much more impact and makes me feel connected to the writers across the centuries.”

    Drawings of a grapevine stem and leaf showing the transport vessels, from Nehemiah Grew's The Anatomy of Plants (1682)
    Her one complaint? “It would be nice if it were easier to search within a book (although I do enjoy scrolling and browsing).” Improved search is a component of the Mining Biodiversity, Digging Into Data project that BHL is currently engaged in. Deliverables will include enhanced search functionality incorporating text mining, semantic metadata, and result visualizations.

    So, which books would a botanical educator choose as her favorite within a collection of more than 150,000 volumes? “It would have to be the two important plant anatomy books from the 17th century, Marcello Malpighi’s Anatome Plantarum (1675) and Nehemiah Grew’s The Anatomy of Plants (1682),” asserts Williams. “The detail and observational quality of the drawings is fantastic. Because of their simplicity in some ways these centuries-old line drawings are clearer and easier to comprehend than an image taken today using a powerful microscope. When I look at these books I am struck by the power of the giants whose shoulders we stand on.”

    We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

    Thank you, Dr. Williams, for taking the time to tell us how BHL has impacted your work. Do you use BHL regularly? Tell us about it by writing to feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org. 

    Down the rabbit (Lepus curpaeums) hole: Edward A. Chapin

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    This post is a guest submission from Julia Blase, Project Manager for The Field Book Project. Learn more about the project here.

    Last week, with the arrival of many more of the field books to the Biodiversity Heritage Library web portal, I had the chance to dive deeply into the field books of Edward Chapin, entomologist and Curator of Insects at the Smithsonian Institution from 1934 to 1954. I spent the most time in his field book covering a set of travels to Cuba and Jamaica, though mostly Jamaica, in 1937 and 1941. It was a fascinating adventure “down the rabbit hole” into another era of history!

    The beetles, bad weather, and endless driving 


    Entry from Edward A. Chapin's "Field notebook, Cube and Jamaica, 1937, 1941, [1947]." Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA Acc. 11-085, Box 1, Folder 1.
    Several things struck me almost as soon as I began reading, the first of which was how closely Chapin’s descriptions of the insect life of the islands were wrapped with his observations of the weather, travel conditions, car problems, dinner menus, host families and housing arrangements, and even clothing purchases. A set of observations on insect collecting might be as short as a sentence or as long as a page, depending on what caught his attention that day. The second item that struck me was how frustrating these kinds of expeditions could be! Not only Chapin deal with the usual traveler’s woes of lost luggage and poor weather, but he also faced challenges unique to the scientist – the difficulty in finding many types of insects, or one insect in many life stages, or in finding relevant insects at all. It seemed that Chapin sometimes spent days driving from one end of the island to the other, looking for abandoned homes, downed trees, fence posts and post holes, and such beetle- and termite-friendly places to explore, and often finding nothing. However, on other days he was so overwhelmed with his findings that the problem became locating additional jars to hold them all!

    Sugar factories, banana plantations, and Panama Disease 


    I also went further down the field book “rabbit hole” with items that Chapin mentioned seemingly offhand. For instance, in one of his entries, he described his visit to a sugar factory and detailed the process by which cane became sucrose and molasses, which I found fascinating. He followed that entry with one describing the tour of the banana plantations on the island, and how the banana carriers (those who took bunches from the rows of plants to spots along the road where they would be loaded into trucks) received only “three shillings a hundred bunches. The work is hard as it means tramping through mud six or eight inches deep for fifty yards or so with about 150 lbs balanced on the head.” I immediately looked online for a recording of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” and began to read about its history as a Jamaican folk song – the song seems so lighthearted, compared to the work it describes. I can hardly imagine the kind of daily labor that the banana carriers endured.

    Chapin even made a brief mention of Panama Disease affecting the banana plants on the island – I did a bit of research and discovered that another strain of Panama Disease is the current cause of problems with the Cavendish banana that we all enjoy at our local grocery stores. “Race 1” of the disease was the cause of the epidemic in the 1950’s that wiped out the previously farmed Gros Michel banana. Chapin’s 1941 journal was recording the disease almost 10 years before it became a widespread problem!

    New Seville and Christopher Columbus 


    I fell into more research when Chapin mentioned a visit to Seville, which was

    “now a large coconut walk but originally the site of the first Roman Catholic cathedral (1505). The foundations have been cleared and in the center of the floor there is a hole about six feet across and ten feet deep, carefully walled with brick, from which a passage leads away to the west. In this passage we found a dozen pieces of very beautifully carved stone, probably the remains of the altar. One piece has the coat-of-arms of the Bishop of Seville, the others are mostly angels and cherubims.” 

    I did a quick search for “Seville, Jamaica” and found a UNESCO world heritage website for “New Seville,” which hosted Christopher Columbus in the late 1490s and did indeed feature a Roman Catholic church of “Peter Martyr, the first abbot of Jamaica, having begun in 1525.” Someone’s dates are off…I’m inclined to think that Chapin was misled in thinking the church was from 1505, but who knows? At least I learned more about the history of Columbus’ voyages in the new world, and just in time for Columbus Day (October 13th).

    WWII Internment Camps 


    Entry from Edward A. Chapin's "Field notebook, Cube and Jamaica, 1937, 1941, [1947]." Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA Acc. 11-085, Box 1, Folder 1.
    One more historical mention led me to another fifteen minutes or so of research – Chapin’s off-hand mention that the husband in one of the families he met on the island was “at present serving at the internment camp as a guard.” The history I knew of U.S. internment camps during WWII only covered the Japanese-American internment camps in the West. I had no idea that there were internment camps in Jamaica. Who did they hold? A quick search revealed that not only were there internment camps on the islands, but that they held both plantation owners who were of German descent and thus “possibly” sympathizers, as well as the German POW’s from U-boats taken in the Atlantic (see also the one-sentence mention of the German POW barracks in Up Park Camp on this page).

    The mongoose and the dolphins 


    And finally, there were two mentions of animals that I found fascinating. The first was a mention of the mongoose, an invasive species introduced to the islands to prey on the rats that destroyed large amounts of sugar cane. As in many other places, the non-native species proved far more destructive than imagined and became more of a problem than the rats themselves even in 1941. The mongoose lives on the islands to this day, and has contributed to the possible extinction of at least four native species. And second, a mention by Chapin of his journey home, where he was off the coast of Cape Hatteras and recorded being

    “in the midst of the herd of bottlenosed dolphins headed north on their annual migration. As far as one can see, in every direction, there are thousands of dolphins moving steadily northward. On either side of the bow, our boat is convoyed by groups of from three to ten animals…we first sighted them at four in the afternoon and they were still with us at dark.” 

    Today herds of dolphins are recorded as numbering only in the hundreds during their winter migration – nevertheless, what a lovely image with which to conclude my research adventures in the field notebooks of Edward A. Chapin, entomologist, traveler, and recorder of both scientific and humanist history.

    For more information 


    For more information about Edward Chapin, and to see the full records for his field books held at the Smithsonian Institution, please see his records in the Smithsonian Collections Search Center.

    As of this blog post, three field books by Edward Chapin have been fully digitized and are available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library site.

    Each of the three field books in BHL has been fully transcribed by volunteers with the Smithsonian Transcription Center. You can find them at the following three links: Cuba and Jamaica, Colombia, Chile.

    Letter from Edward A. Chapin's "Field notebook, Cube and Jamaica, 1937, 1941, [1947]." Smithsonian Institution Archives. SIA Acc. 11-085, Box 1, Folder 1.

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