Biodiversity Heritage Library

Have you ever been to a museum and wondered about the history of the specimens on display?

If you have, then you'd probably be interested in talking to the museum's collections managers, as their jobs include not only caring for and improving accessibility to the collections, but also serving as a living knowledge repository for information about the history of the collections.

William Flower's drawing of the bottlenose dolphin (lower). The skeleton from this individual is on display in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Flower, W. H. (1880), I. On the External Characters of two Species of British Dolphins (Delphinus delphis, Linn., and Delphinus tursio, Fabr.). The Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 11: no 1. Digitized by the Natural History Museum, London. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/28725656.

Take the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, for example. Amongst the many treasures on display in that museum are five whale skeletons suspended from the roof. Where did those specimens come from? Mark Carnall, Collections Manager for the Life Collections at the museum, knows that these specimens are linked to some very prestigious individuals in the world of ‘whaleologists’, including Daniel Frederick Eschricht and William Henry Flower. Curious? Learn more in Mark's blog post for More than a Dodo.

Mark Carnall. Image by John Cardwell courtesy Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

As a collections manager for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and during his tenure at other major UK museums, Mark has spent a great deal of time researching the history of the specimens in his care. BHL plays an important role in this research.

"Having worked at some of the older UK natural history museums, including the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London, the Natural History Museum London and currently the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, I’ve been very fortunate in that some of the early references to the specimens that I curate are ‘THE’ original works when it comes to unravelling the physiology, taxonomy and ecology of major groups of animals, and it is rare that these aren’t already on BHL," says Mark.

British Sea-Anemones, showing many of the species in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History series. Gosse, Philip Henry. Actinologia britannica (1860). Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12042290.

Mark first discovered BHL when looking for references and citations for specimens during his time at University College London. Today, he uses BHL about once a week as part of his research to answer inquiries about the museum's collections. This research can be very time-intensive, and thus having online access to relevant publications is very important.

"As a collections manager, my role is dictated by priorities in improving accessibility to the collections, so often there isn’t much time for going in to depth with the history of specimens," explains Mark. "Some specimens could be researched for weeks or months; however, with easy access to biodiversity heritage publications through BHL, it means that I can do some of this research on the fly rather than earmark it to return to later."

In addition to discovering publications as part of his research process, Mark also discovers additional content of personal interest through BHL's social media activities.

"One of my favourite features of BHL is the 'curated content' such as the blog posts that BHL users and staff write about discoveries or fascinatingly esoteric publications," says Mark. "I am also a huge fan of the Flickr sets. As a collections manager, I’m always thinking about how people can access our specimens and content. A dry item by item database is fine for people who know what they are specifically looking for, but it doesn’t facilitate browsing such a vast amount of content or expose people to new knowledge or information. I’ve spent more than a few evenings starting by browsing a Flickr album I’ve been directed to by a BHL blog and ending up reading papers completely unrelated because making those fluid connections is so easy. The BHL social media team is also fantastic at raising awareness about the latest content on BHL. Additionally, I really appreciate that it’s clear how to reuse and credit resources, be it from reusing an image on Twitter to a bibliographic reference."

When it comes to favorite content, Mark has a soft spot for the cephalopod material.

"I’m a huge cephalopod nerd," admits Mark. "For such an interesting group there’s actually a paucity of published material. Browsing through BHL images, however, I’ve gone from sea monsters to beautifully illustrated plates (see for yourself), which I would have otherwise not stumbled upon or overlooked in the hunt for a taxon description."

The rather sad-looking but earliest bona fide remains of a giant squid. Verrill, A.E. The cephalopods of the north-eastern coast of America. (1879-1881). Digitized by MBLWHOI Library. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11826545.

Currently, his favorite item on BHL is the poem Spirula spirula by C. W. Johnson in the Nautilus (1926). According to Mark, "It’s a quirky (but accurate at the time) poem about the ram’s horn squid and formally captures a geekery and whimsy that you just don’t see as much in modern formal science publishing."

While the historic collections and curated content on BHL are extremely valuable to Mark, he would love to see the amount of content from the mid-twentieth century expanded. This content, especially that from the 1930s-1970s, can be extremely difficult to access but can contain very valuable information for research.

You can help us obtain permission to include this content in BHL! If you or an organization you work with owns the copyright to a biodiversity-related publication, you can help us broker permission to digitize the work. Learn more on our website.

So, the next time you're at a museum, take a moment to think about the history of the specimens on display and the people who work so hard to care for and preserve knowledge about those pieces. And just maybe, indulge your curiosity by searching for some related publications or browsing related images in BHL. You never know what kind of history you might dig up.

Origins of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

The story of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) begins in the1830s, when a small group of men filled a two-room wooden building in Public Square, downtown Cleveland, with mounted animals. This building was known as the "Ark," and the men who gathered there, united in their passion for natural history, were called "Arkites."

The Arkites were led by William Case, who would later become mayor of Cleveland. He, his brother, and his father had used the Ark as a place to retreat from work, and in the absence of any other museums in the city, it became a hub for all kinds of collection and research.

Case Hall, engraving by William Payne,
courtesy of Special Collections,
Cleveland State University Library

In 1876, the Ark was relocated to Case Hall. It shared the space with other organizations, including the Kirtland Society (formerly the Cleveland Academy of Natural Sciences), named after renowned naturalist and fellow Arkite Jared Potter Kirtland, who died the following year. Case Hall remained the home of the Ark until 1916, when it was demolished to make way for the U.S. Post Office, Court House, and Custom House.

Kirtland's Warbler, namesake of Jared Potter Kirtland,
from C.J. Maynard's The Birds of Eastern North America, 1896,
Plate XXI. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

The collections of both the Ark and the Kirtland Society found a new home in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, founded in 1920. CMNH relocated several times as its collections grew, settling eventually at Wade Park, where it is today. William Case's bird collection can still be viewed there, as well as many of the specimens provided by the Kirtland Society. Other exhibits include Balto, the hero dog of Nome, Alaska; "Dunk," a large specimen of Dunkleosteus terrelli; and, most famous of all, "Lucy," discovered in 1974 by former CMNH curator Donald Johanson.

The collections and physical space of the museum continue to grow today; this spring, CMNH unveiled the Ralph Perkins II Wildlife Center & Woods Garden, where visitors can view Ohio flora and fauna in their native habitat.

Kirtlandia

In 1972, CMNH began publishing Kirtlandia, a journal of original, peer-reviewed research by Museum staff. Wendy Wasman, Librarian and Archivist of the Harold T. Clark Library at CMNH, notes that Kirtlandia has a "long history of publishing cutting edge research in the natural sciences...Over the years, there have been articles on dinosaurs, fossil sharks, archaeology, botany, herpetology, mussels, moths, and even an entire issue devoted to paleontological research of the Kenya Rift Valley."

Partial skeleton of "Lucy,"from Johanson, et al.,
"A New Species of the Genus Australopithecus...",
Kirtlandia, no. 28, 1978. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Early on, Kirtlandia issues focused on a single topic. In the late 1970s, however, issues began to contain multiple articles, and the length of those articles increased. They also featured more photographs and diagrams, though they retained their simple, sparse design.

Kirtlandia is supported by the Kirtlandia Society, founded in 1976 to advance research and education at the museum. Wasman says that because the CMNH library (named the Harold Terry Clark Library in 1972) had an active publications exchange program from the beginning, Kirtlandia can now be found in over 200 university and museum libraries worldwide, and that while publication is currently in hiatus, BHL has given it an even wider reach.

Kirtlandia was digitized by the Smithsonian Libraries as a part of the IMLS-funded Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) project. Susan Lynch, an EABL team member at the New York Botanical Garden, worked with Rod Page and BioStor, using metadata provided by Wendy Wasman, to define all of the articles in Kirtlandia. This allows users to search for and navigate to individual articles in the journal without having to scroll through an entire volume or set of volumes.

In search results, Kirtlandia articles can be found under the Articles/Chapters/Treatments tab:

When browsing from the title page, articles can be found by clicking View Identified Parts:

Thank you to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Harold T. Clark Library for giving us permission to make Kirtlandia available in BHL!

Patrick Randall

Community Manager

Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature

Reference

"ARK."The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Last modified July 10, 1997. Accessed November 16, 2016. http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=A16.

"Case Hall."The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Last modified November 9, 2005. Accessed November 16, 2016. http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=CH.

"History."Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Accessed November 16, 2016. https://www.cmnh.org/about-the-museum/history.

"Kirtlandia Society." Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Accessed November 16, 2016.

https://www.cmnh.org/kirtlandiasociety.

Splain, Emily. "Cleveland Museum of Natural History."Cleveland Historical. Accessed November 16, 2016. https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/41.

By: Lesley Parilla
Cataloger, The Field Book Project
Smithsonian Libraries

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we would like to highlight a field book that documents Native American knowledge of natural resources. The field book was created by William J. Fisher, who lived in southern Alaska from 1879 until his death in 1903.

Fisher's notebook documents his final years collecting and looks at the relationship between the Alutiiq (Aleut) and their plants by recording medicinal and food uses for 48 specimens. Only a handful of the specimen entries include the taxonomic names of plants; instead, entries focus on recording the Russian and Sugpiat/Alutiiq names of plants, how the plants were used, and plant distribution. Detail varies, as seen below in entries three and forty-seven.

Entry three describes Fritullaria kamschathensis [Fritillaria camschatcensis], also known as the Kamchatka Fritillary, and lists general use and preparation: "Used as an article of food by natives. The bulbs are boiled mashed and after a liberal supply of seal or whale oil has been thoroughly mixed therewith, it is put away for winter’s use.”

Specimen entry three from "Notes accompanying collection of useful plants made by W. J. Fisher at [Kodiak] in 1899," Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA Acc. 12-038. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/46428854. Digitized by Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Image of Fritillaria camschatcensis from Encyclopedia of Life, provided by Biopix. http://eol.org/data_objects/19162439.

Entry forty-seven for Ledum palustre [Rhododendron tomentosum], also known as Northern Labrador Tea (also pictured below), takes up an entire page describing the plant's habitat, the appearance of its flowers, and multiple local medicinal applications: "(1) As a tea it is freely drunk in alleviating the hacking cough of consumptives. (2) As a gargle in sore throat. (3) Administered as tea it is efficacious in relieving asthmatic complaints."

Specimen entry forty-seven, from "Notes accompanying collection of useful plants made by W. J. Fisher at [Kodiak] in 1899," Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA Acc. 12-038. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/46428831. Digitized by Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Image of Rhododendron tomentosum (Northern Labrador Tea), from Encyclopedia of Life. Image by Biopix. http://eol.org/data_objects/19183248.

Fisher's ethnographic focus while collecting plants is clear. The field book provides detailed information regarding local names and knowledge, but leaves out basic information often found in botany field books like date and detailed locality information. This lack of information may relate to a note Fisher wrote on the title page: "dried plants with Mr. Kearney, alcoholics in seed collection.""Mr. Kearney" was Thomas Henry Kearney (1874-1956), a botanist with the Bureau of Plant Industry at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Kearney was in Alaska to work with Frederick Coville from April 1898 - August 1899, and along the Northwest Coast from Puget Sound to the Bering Strait in 1899. He then served as a member of the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899.

It is unclear how the two men became acquainted. Fisher had a relationship with the Smithsonian Institution; Coville as a USDA employee worked with Smithsonian, and perhaps he introduced the two. Whatever the reason, Kearney's field notes for his work in Alaska are also available on BHL through the Smithsonian Field Book Project, and they provide a tantalizing overlap in content and geographical coverage.

A field book at the end of a collecting career

Fisher's field book is also interesting because it document's his collecting focus and interests as they evolved over a lifetime. Fisher’s initial scientific interest was in marine biology. During the 1870’s he was a curator of conchology at the California Academy of Sciences and served as a marine biologist for the U.S. Fish Commission on several cruises in the Pacific headed by William Healey Dall.

In 1879, Fisher accepted a position as tidal recorder in St. Paul, now known as the city of Kodiak, Alaska. After accepting the position, he wrote to Dall, who was affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, and offered to collect natural history specimens. The offer was accepted, and Fisher was instructed that the museum was also interested in ethnographic artifacts from the region.

The town of St. Paul where Fisher settled was originally established by the Russians as a center for fur trading. By the time Fisher arrived, it was a town of approximately 500 residents, primarily of Russian and Native Alaskan heritage. According to an article in Arctic Anthropology (no. 1, 1992) the community was still significantly mixed regarding the adoption of European culture in terms of religion, language, and beliefs.

Fisher initially focused on collecting natural history specimens, but as he began to correspond with Smithsonian’s Secretary Spencer Baird, his interest and collecting shifted to ethnography. He even began to commission works by Native Alaskans. Fisher’s main source of income was his position as tidal recorder; Smithsonian was frequently unable to finance his work. This lack of funding apparently did not dim Fisher’s enthusiasm, but it did lead to financial hardship. During an extended collecting trip to Bristol Bay in the summer of 1885, his assistant successfully petitioned for Fisher’s job. Fisher’s collecting came to an end by the 1890’s; the ethnobotany field notes document the end of his work with the Smithsonian Institution.

Interested in learning more? We encourage you to learn about the William J. Fisher collection at the National Museum of Natural History, which was highlighted as part of a book Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People, in the online exhibit featuring artifacts created by the Alutiiq people and collected by Fisher during his years in Alaska.

Other resources include:

Aron L. Crowell, 1992, Postcontact Koniag Ceremonialism on Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula: Evidence from the Fisher Collection. Arctic Anthropology 29(1):18-37. Retrieved on November 16, 2016 from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40316240?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Highlights of the William J. Fisher collection at the National Museum of Natural History: http://naturalhistory.si.edu/arctic/features/fisher/collect.html

The field books of William Healey Dall, available on Biodiversity Heritage Library: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/search?searchTerm=Dall+%22field+notes%22#/titles

Field Book Project blog post by Sonoe Nakasone: http://nmnh.typepad.com/fieldbooks/2012/02/sharing-culture-through-plants.html

Are you planning to do some shopping for Black Friday? Do you want your purchase to make an impact on biodiversity conservation and research?

Then the BHL Black Friday Sale is perfect for you!

Save 10% off select products in the BHL store for our Black Friday Sale. 100% of the proceeds will be used to digitize more books for BHL. Hurry! Sale ends Sunday, Nov. 27.
SHOP NOW!

From November 23-27, save 10% off select products in the BHL store. In our Black Friday Sale Collection, you'll find notebooks, greeting cards, mugs, home decor, and more great items featuring beautiful scientific illustrations from the BHL collection.

Visit the Black Friday Sale Collection and start shopping today!

Not only are these products 10% off for our sale, but 100% of the proceeds will be used to digitize more books for BHL. Researchers around the world rely on the information contained in books and archival materials to study and conserve biodiversity. Learn more about how BHL helps save biodiversity and how your purchase can have a lasting, positive impact on our planet.

You'll find this badge in our store and on all of our marketing materials. It means that your purchase will help support research around the world. SHOP TODAY and help save biodiversity!

Shop today to find that perfect gift and help support biodiversity research around the world! Hurry! The sale ends Sunday!

William Henry Holmes, about 1875. Random Records of a Lifetime. v. 1. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52009570. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

From November 28th through December 9th, BHL is joining the Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Field Book Project, and Smithsonian Transcription Center in hosting the #ManyHatsofHolmes transcription event. This event challenges volunteers around the world to help us transcribe William Henry Holmes' archival materials. Learn more on the Smithsonian Libraries' blog.

As the hashtag implies, William Henry Holmes (1846-1933) studied a variety of topics throughout his distinguished career, including anthropology, archaeology, art, and geology. He spent much of his career affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. He studied art under Theodore Kauffman and went on to work as a scientific illustrator with Smithsonian staff. In 1872, he was appointed artist-topographer to the United States survey of the territories under Ferdinand V. Hayden and in 1874 was appointed assistant geologist. He went on to work with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) before returning to the Smithsonian's United States National Museum (USNM). Holmes eventually became head curator of the Smithsonian Institution's Department of Anthropology and Director of the National Gallery of Art.

Many of Holmes' field notes and personal records have been digitized by Smithsonian Libraries and Smithsonian Institution Archives as part of The Field Book Project. These are available in BHL. In addition to these archival materials, BHL also holds a number of publications by Holmes.

Top figure: Vessel made from a lightning whelk (Sinistrofulgur perversum) - synonym Busycon perversum - shell. Bottom figure: Earthen vessel made in imitation of a shell. Holmes, William Henry. Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans. 1883. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11258636. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

One of those publications is Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans, which was published in 1883 as part of the second annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Holmes intended this publication to be a preliminary study of the ways in which Native Americans in the distant past used shells as a medium for artistic expression and how this artwork represents a phase in the evolution of human culture. It discusses the use of shells as implements, utensils, and objects of ornamentation (such as jewelry).

Most of the objects presented in the publication were obtained from graves and tumuli (ancient burial mounds), which explains how such delicate pieces survived throughout the centuries. But, while these pieces can be deemed ancient, Holmes did not have enough data to provide a reliable estimation of age.

At this point, you might be wondering why a book about shell art would be relevant for a biodiversity library and what bearing it might have on scientific research. The simple answer is that these shells are remnants of living creatures - mollusks that died long ago but still left behind a legacy in shell. However, Art in Shell has relevance for scientific research beyond this vague connection with the natural world.

Shell spoons made from Lampsilis ovata (synonym Unio ovatus) - top and center - and Potamilus alatus (synonym Unio alatus) - bottom. Holmes, William Henry. Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans. 1883. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11258608. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

In the publication, Holmes attempts to identify the species (or most-specific taxa possible) to which the shell used for the object belongs. This information provides a valuable record of human interaction with various mollusk species and helps document the diversity of species present in ancient America. The presence of shells in various regions, when coupled with species distribution data that demonstrates the transport of these shells from their source, can also provide insight into historic Native American migration paths, tribal contacts, and trade.

Thus, this book is not just a book about art. It represents a beautiful union of art and science. And considering the many disciplinary hats that Holmes wore throughout his career, it's no surprise that his publication would bridge these two worlds. Art in Shell is therefore not only a very fitting book to highlight as a representation of the union of Holmes' many interests, but the insights it provides into Native American culture also make it particularly relevant this month as we celebrate Native American Heritage Month.

Implements made from Unio vericosus (figs. 1 and 2), Cyclonaias tuberculata (synonym Unio tuberculosus, figs. 3-5) and Pecten (fig. 6). Holmes, William Henry. Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans. 1883. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11258618. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

So, can we tie this publication back to the Random Records of a Lifetime series that is the subject of our #ManyHatsofHolmes transcription event? Holmes' discussion about his work with shell art in these records seems to be fairly limited, but in his biographical sketch in volume I, Holmes does report that, "The years 1882-3-4 and 5 were devoted largely to Museum work and the study of primitive art in its various branches." AsArt in Shell was published in 1883, this account is likely a reference in part to his work on this publication (as well as the many others on ancient American art that he produced during this time period).

As you participate in the challenge, can you find additional references in the Random Records that can be linked back to Art in Shell? If you do, share them on social media with #ManyHatsofHolmes.

Additionally, if you need a break from transcription or want another challenge, try taxon tagging the illustrations from Holmes'Art in Shell on Flickr. By tagging the shell art with the taxonomic name of the species to which the shell belongs, you can help researchers more easily discover which species ancient Americans were using to create these objects. Learn more about taxon tagging in this article and see our detailed instructions here. Find the Art in Shell images in Flickr here.

See this video for basic instructions on how to tag the illustrations in Art in Shell:

Holmes was truly a man of many trades and talents. As you dig deeper into his work during the #ManyHatsofHolmes event, be sure to share your findings on social media with the hashtag. Thanks so much for participating in our Holmes extravaganza!

Beads and pearls. Figs. 1, 7, 12, and 9: Sinistrofulgur perversum (synonym Busycon perversum); Fig. 2: Crassadoma gigantea (synonym Hinnites giganteus); Fig. 3 and 13: pearls, latter from Haliotis californianus; Fig. 4: unknown univalve; Fig. 5: ivory?; Figs. 6 and 11: unknown dextral whorled shell; Fig. 14: Strombus or Busycon. Holmes, William Henry. Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans. 1883. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/11258675. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Get ready for the holidays with the new Holiday Collection in the BHL store!

Shop the new Holiday Collection in the BHL store today and help support biodiversity research around the world. 100% of the proceeds will be used to digitize more books for BHL. SHOP NOW!

The collection includes greeting cards, ornaments, mugs, and gifts featuring fun holiday-themed art from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Shop the BHL Holiday Collection today!

Not only are these products perfect for the holidays, but (just like with all of the products in the BHL store), 100% of the proceeds will be used to help us digitize more books for BHL. Researchers around the world rely on the information contained in books and archival materials to study and conserve biodiversity. Learn more about how BHL helps save biodiversity and how your purchase can have a lasting, positive impact on our planet.

You'll find this badge in our store and on our marketing materials. It means that your purchase will help support research around the world. SHOP TODAY and help save biodiversity!

Visit the BHL Holiday Collection today to do some shopping that's good for the planet.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to welcome the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) as a new Member. As BHL’s 17th Member, MNHN will expand the breadth of BHL’s collection and service to the global scientific community.

The Muséum’s membership came into effect at a ceremony in Paris at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle on 2 December 2016. During the ceremony, Dr. Bruno David, President of the Muséum, signed a certificate of membership on behalf of MNHN, and Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn, Chair of the BHL Members’ Council and Director of Smithsonian Libraries, co-signed the certificate on behalf of the BHL consortium.

Ceremony and Certificate of Membership Signing at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle on 2 December 2016. From left to right: Dr. Bruno David (President of the Muséum), Martin R. Kalfatovic (BHL Program Director), Laurence Bénichou (Head and Publications Manager, Museum Science Press, MNHN), Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn (Chair of the BHL Members' Council and Director of Smithsonian Libraries), Gildas Illien (Director of Libraries and Documentation, MNHN). Image copyright: MNHN - JC Domenech.

Established in 1793, "le Muséum" - as it is simply known in France - is the national natural history Museum of France. The MNHN Library holds more than 2 million items reflecting the vast spectrum of the Muséum’s research activities. The library has been digitizing its collections for well over a decade, often in connection with European and international digital collaborations including BHL Europe. Over 500,000 pages of primarily natural science literature have been digitized to date.

“The Muséum is committed to facilitating its global service to research by developing international partnerships and enhancing its digital strategies. It has invested significant effort and resources into developing a comprehensive digitization program,” asserts Dr. Bruno David, President of the MNHN. “BHL has become a standard resource for natural scientists around the world and it provides services that are extremely popular within our own research communities in France. Participation in BHL will allow us to increase the visibility of our collections, contribute to the international dissemination of taxonomic research, and participate in a global effort to promote open access, open science, and open data.”

As a BHL Member, MNHN will enhance BHL’s collection by contributing rare and unique material from the Muséum’s library, including the entire collection of MNHN scientific publications from 1802 to 2000. (Materials published after 2000 are available through other portals.) The library will also contribute to the expansion of global collection development strategies and facilitate partnerships with other institutions in France and throughout Europe.

“We have had a relationship with Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle for many years through BHL Europe, and this year we are excited to see that relationship expand through membership,” affirms BHL Program Director Martin R. Kalfatovic. “For the past decade, we have been working diligently to build global partnerships that allow us to enhance the comprehensiveness of our collections and support research across the globe. We look forward to working with our MNHN colleagues to increase our impact on the European and international research communities.”

Explore the full BHL consortium here.

From left:
Bruno David, Martin R. Kalfatovic,
Laurence Bénichou, Nancy E. Gwinn, Gildas Illien.
Photo by Jean-Christophe Domenech

By Martin R. Kalfatovic
BHL Program Director

I was honored to participate in the signing ceremony on 2 December 2016 where Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle officially joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Accompanying Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn (Smithsonian Libraries Director and Chair of the BHL Members' Council), the ceremony was held in the amphitheater of the Galeries d'Anatomie comparée et de Paléontologie. Attending on behalf of the MNHN were Dr. Bruno David (Director), Gildas Illien (head of the MNHN library), and Laurence Bénichou (Head, Publications Scientifiques).

Immediately before the meeting, I gave a presentation ("Increasing Access, Promoting Progress: Empowering Global Research through the BHL") on BHL to representatives from a number of large natural history museums from around the world (including BHL partners American Museum of Natural History, The Field Museum of Natural History, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Natural History Museum (London), National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Libraries), Natural History Museum Los Angeles County, and Naturalis Biodiversity Center).

Earlier, on 30 November, I was treated to a tour of the MNHN library by M. Illien and had the opportunity to meet with key staff (Alice LeMaire, Anaïs Rameaux, Chloé Besombes, and Vincent Detienne) who will be participating in BHL. The following day, I met with Laurence Bénichou and the staff of the Publications Scientifiques. Topics included BHL metadata models and best practices to be reviewed for ingest of MNHN publications into BHL.

A tour of the Grand Hall of Evolution and the special exhibition, Espèces d’ours! was also arranged. The Grande Galerie de l'Évolution is an amazing four level exhibition that documents life on our planet. The installation is an outstanding re-envisioning of an older space for the 21st century. Of personal interest was the La salle des espèces menacées et disparues and a nice display of artifacts related to Raphus cucullatus.

On 2 December, before the signing ceremony, the Museum arranged for a tour of the Jardin des Plantes for me and Nancy E. Gwinn. Our host, Fabien Dupuis, Desk Officer from the office of International and European Affairs, provided an excellent tour of the gardens and greenhouses that are under the auspices of the Museum.

Herbarium (left) and Galeries d'Anatomie comparée et de Paléontologie (right)

Gwinn (left) and Illien (right)

My special thanks to the staff of the Museum for arranging our visit. Gildas Illien was a superb host who juggled multiple high-profile events during this brief visit. It was a pleasure to meet him in person after many emails and phone calls. All of us at BHL and the Smithsonian look forward to working with him in the years to come. And at last, I was able to meet with Laurence Bénichou in France after seeing her in many other places around the world. Seeing her office, located in the 18th century home of noted naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, made one appreciate the over 200 year history of scientific publishing at the Museum.

And yes, good food was had by all ...

Raphus cucullatus

Night-blowing (Blooming) Cereus (Selenicereus grandiflorus). Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. v. 62 (1835). http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/465887. Digitized by the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

‘Queen of the dark, whose tender glories fade
In the gay radiance of the noon-tide hours.’

‘That flower, supreme in loveliness, and pure
As the pale Cynthia’s beams, through which unveiled
It blooms, as if unwilling to endure
The gaze, by which such beauties are assailed.’

These elegant lines are quoted in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (v. 62, 1835) as part of the description for the Night-blowing (Blooming) Cereus (Selenicereus grandiflorus) and serve as an artful conveyance of the species' nocturnal blooming. But these lines represent more than just a whimsical representation of plant behavior. They are a reflection of the eighteenth century Poetic Botany movement that saw botany become the subject of poetry.

The Poetic Botany movement began with Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, who, in 1789, published The Loves of the Plants, a poem that in essence was a versification of Linnaean botany, where each plant in the garden is personified as a Greek god or goddess whose characteristics and interactions are meant to elucidate the Linnaean sexual system of plant classification. This highly successful poem was eventually republished along with a second poem by E. Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, in 1791 as The Botanic Garden, A Poem in Two Parts, thus launching a movement that was proliferated by such authors as Frances Arabella Rowden, Charlotte Smith, and Robert John Thornton.

Frontispiece for the Digital Exhibition Poetic Botany: Art and Science of the Eighteenth-Century Vegetable World (2016). Credit: Ryan Feigenbaum.

Selenicereus grandiflorus is one of nine species featured in the online exhibition Poetic Botany. Using these plants as a lens through which to highlight the Poetic Botany movement, the exhibition introduces the botanists and works that constituted this period. These botanists were concerned with not just the art of their verse but also with the scientific study of their plant subjects, and thus the Poetic Botany movement reflects a beautiful union of art and science.

Ryan Feigenbaum at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Credit: Madeline Chera, 2016.

The Poetic Botany exhibition was created by Ryan Feigenbaum as part of a 2015-2016 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Humanities Institute of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden. NYBG, a founding BHL Member who has contributed over 3.9 million pages to the BHL collection, hosts the exhibit.

Feigenbaum, who has a BA in philosophy from DePaul University in Chicago, an MA in philosophy from Villanova University, and is currently completing a PhD in philosophy at Villanova University, researches the history and philosophy of biology. As evidenced through Poetic Botany, this research eventually led him down a botanical path.

"My dissertation, 'The Epistemic Foundations of German Biology, 1790–1802,' analyzes the emergence of biology as a science by tracing the genealogy of the organism concept," explains Feigenbaum. "I came to the history of botany as an offshoot of this project; specifically, I was interested in the eighteenth-century opinion of plants, i.e., their ontological status. Whereas plants had long been regarded as devoid of intelligence, sensitivity, and locomotion, naturalists like Erasmus Darwin began to challenge these views, spurred on by the 'discovery' of plants like the Drosera and Mimosa pudica that challenged longstanding prejudices."

Feigenbaum's interest in the "life sciences" and the history of botany grew naturally out of his research on philosophy, for these two subjects have historically been intimately connected.

"The separation of philosophy and science is a relatively recent phenomenon," affirms Feigenbaum. "Descartes, for instance, contributed to mathematics and physics beyond his cogito ergo sum, and much of Aristotle’s corpus focuses not on metaphysics or ethics but natural science. In this vein, I’ve been committed to studying not only eighteenth-century philosophy, but also its life science for the past five years or so. I say 'life science' because biology did not yet exist; the word 'biology,' in fact, was not used in its modern meaning until 1802. The how and why of biology’s emergence at this time is one focus of my dissertation."

It was this extension into the 'life sciences' that eventually brought Feigenbaum to BHL.

"As my study of the history of philosophy incorporated more and more of the study of the history of science, BHL became a resource I relied on time and again," asserts Feigenbaum. "At first I would search via Google for a particular eighteenth-century text, but I found it so often on BHL that I ended up using its website portal directly, sparing me the trouble of having to sift through Google results."

BHL played an important role in the development of Poetic Botany, allowing Feigenbaum to discover and access relevant texts, many of which are linked from the exhibit.

"BHL provides smart access to knowledge that wouldn’t be otherwise available," lauds Feigenbaum. "My favorite feature is the ability search by species. Since the digital exhibition is organized around species, this ability revealed new sources of which I’d been unaware. It is quite amazing that you can instantly see in which texts a species like Canna indica appeared according to date and then be taken to the exact pages of the reference. Without this resource, my workflow would have been much slower; it would’ve required me to visit multiple archives and search through texts one by one. While such an approach isn’t without its benefits, it inevitably limits what the researcher can do and extends the time required to do it."

American bog plants: eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), yellow pitcherplant (Sarracenia flava), and Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). Thornton, Robert John. New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus. (1807) http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/307056. Digitized by the Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

While there are many texts featured in Poetic Botany, one of Feigenbaum's favorites is John Thornton’s New Illustration of the Sexual System. According to Feigenbaum,

"This perennial favorite is often acclaimed for its indisputably beautiful illustrations, perhaps some of the most iconic in existence. However, the accompanying text is also marvelous, giving the reader insights into eighteenth-century botany, snippets of poetry, and whole disquisitions on culture, religion, and other topics."

This title is also consistently a favorite among BHL's online audiences. Thanks to the citizen science efforts of Michelle Marshall, this entire work has also been taxon tagged in Flickr, making it easy for you to identify and search for the species contained within it.

We encourage you to take some time to explore Poetic Botany and marvel at the elegant and profound union of art and science represented in the exhibit and texts. Who would have thought that poetry and science could fit together so naturally?

Just past the halfway point of its 2-year IMLS grant period, the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) project has made significant contributions to BHL's collections and is well on its way to achieving its stated goals: securing permission for 50 in-copyright titles; adding 100 new contributors; adding 300,000 metadata records; and positioning BHL as an on-ramp for content delivered to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

The institutions participating in EABL

Background

EABL was conceived to address some of the persistent challenges facing digital repositories in the U.S. scientific community. How do small organizations get involved when they don't have much content to contribute? How can the necessary metadata be harvested or created to point to their content? And how can the discoverability of that content be improved?

By reaching out to small natural history organizations outside the BHL consortium, EABL has created a pathway for inclusion in BHL, and, ultimately, the U.S. national digital infrastructure (DPLA). The first step is getting content into BHL.

Process

Diagram illustrating the relationship between IA and BHL

When an institution has already digitized its content, EABL Metadata Specialist Mariah Lewis, at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), uploads it to Internet Archive (IA). Because BHL strives to create cover-to-cover digital reproductions of the printed item, this sometimes requires stitching together article PDFs prior to upload. It also requires a MARCXML record, which Mariah pulls from an existing catalog record or, in rare cases, creates from scratch. Once in IA, the content is ingested into the BHL EABL collection, where Mariah curates it to ensure that it displays correct enumeration and metadata. Recently, the EABL team worked with BHL to add a "Rights Holder" field, which distinguishes the organization that owns the copyright for a publication from the "Contributor," or the organizations that provided the physical copy.

For organizations with material that hasn't yet been digitized, EABL provides funds for shipping and scanning the material at an IA scanning center. In special cases where the material is too fragile or valuable to ship to IA, EABL is working with third-party scanners or training personnel to do their own in-house scanning. Alternatively, EABL secures permission for a title from the rights holder and then a BHL member library pulls a copy from the shelf and scans it.

Material that is uploaded to BHL will eventually appear in DPLA as well. DPLA is currently mapping its fields to BHL to facilitate this content transfer and will have records ready for review early in the new year. When this process is complete, BHL will be a "content hub," aggregating content from smaller providers and feeding it to DPLA.

For organizations that plan to contribute material to BHL over time, especially those that are interested in becoming BHL Affiliates, Mariah provides training on all aspects of the BHL digitization workflow. She does this in person or virtually, depending on the organization's needs, and has also created video tutorials of the metadata creation and upload process.

Results

So far, EABL has secured permission for 106 in-copyright titles and added 59 new contributors to BHL. The EABL collection holds 3,428 volumes from 289 titles, containing 377,924 pages. Important titles (some of which have not yet been scanned) include:

Zoologica: Scientific Contributions of the New York Zoological Society
Roosevelt Wild Life Bulletinand Roosevelt Wild Life Annals
Entomologica Americana
Wilson Journal of Ornithology
Journal of Arachnology
North American Birds
Kirtlandia
Journal of the New York Entomological Society
Journal of Raptor Research
Memoirs of the Southern California Academy of Sciences
Arnoldia
The Green Scene
Transactions of the Worcester County Horticultural Society

An important part of curating these titles, and one that greatly enhances their discoverability, is article and chapter definition. EABL team members Susan Lynch at NYBG and Trish Rose-Sandler at Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) are working to index journals added to BHL through EABL. This involves collecting available citations from the publisher or from databases like Web of Science so that article titles and authors' names can be isolated. To date, EABL has indexed 58,801 articles and chapters in BHL. The value of this becomes apparent when browsing long-running publications like Zoologica or Kirtlandia, which are now 100% indexed. (For more information about how to view articles, see last month's blog post about Kirtlandia).

In-copyright titles added by BHL

For more information about EABL, please visit the wiki, where you will find an up-to-date list of digitized titles, a list of presentations given about the project, related blog posts, and the EABL Twitter feed.

Get Involved

EABL will receive new content through the fall of 2018. If you know of a publication or institution that you would like to see represented in BHL and DPLA, please contact EABL Community Manager Patrick Randall at patrickrandall@fas.harvard.edu or Principal Investigator Susan Fraser at sfraser@nybg.org. If you would like funding for digitization, please fill out the EABL interest survey.

By Bianca Crowley
BHL Digital Collections Manager

At the end of October I attended the Internet Archive Library Leaders Forum 2016. This was the 3rd time I've attended this meeting since 2009 and was by far the best one yet! The Forum coincided with IA's 20th anniversary so there was a big push from IA to showcase their latest and greatest to celebrate their platinum year.

Some of the coolest new features highlighted:

The ability to perform a full text search across all books and journal volumes in IA such as this full text search for "darwin."
New keyword search functionality for their Wayback Machine - just look at all these web pages about "biodiversity."
Additionally, Wikimedia Foundation is now using the Wayback Machine to fix over 1 million broken links in English Wikipedia! Plus Mozilla is experimenting with the Wayback Machine to develop a pilot that will eliminate the dreaded 404 pages that pop up when Internet links break. How useful!
See more of their newest cool innovations

New GifCities searchable gif database

New Webverse 3D web visualization tool

The most successful aspect of the Forum was meeting with Internet Archive colleagues and partners face to face, many of which share similar digitization workflow and collection management challenges to BHL. In particular, colleagues from the Getty Research Institute, Georgetown University Law Library and HathiTrust are pursuing projects that could help inform BHL collection development for the future.

IA Founder Brewster Kahle delivers presentation

Interestingly, as the meeting attendees imagined the future of libraries over the next 10-20 years, I was pleased to hear that some of the challenges shared by both HathiTrust and IA are issues BHL has already considered and continues to explore as its collection and consortium grows:

In what ways can we expand the scope of our content? Should we?
What are the best strategies to ensure comprehensiveness of your collection?
How can we encourage greater curation of our collection?
What emphasis should be placed on the development of tools for de-duplication?

The BEST thing accomplished during the Forum was getting access to IA's Slack tool and encouraging the formation of BHL's very own channel. Now when questions and problems arise we have a direct line to some of IA's key digitization management staff. As Digital Collections Manager for BHL this has already proven to be an extremely useful means to troubleshoot digitization and metadata issues.

Internet Archive staff are a positive group of motivated, creative individuals and it was a pleasure attending this productive meeting. Kudos to Wendy Hanamura for organizing a positive experience!

Me and an IA Petabox storage system

-Bianca Crowley, Digital Collections Manager

Internet Archive's official truck

By Anne Griffin
Head of Cataloguing
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives.

Fig. 1. Title Page. Boym, Michał Piotr. Flora sinensis. 1656. Digitized by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52239363.

Flora sinensis is one of the first natural history books on China by a European. Authored by Michał Piotr Boym, it was published in 1656 by Matthæi Rictii in Vienna. Boym dedicated it to Leopold I (1640-1705), Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia and King of Serbia, and included a poem incorporating chronograms alluding to his coronation date, 1655.

Fig. 2 Ananas (pineapple). Boym, Michał Piotr. Flora sinensis. 1656. Digitized by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52239334.

Augustin Pyramus, a Swiss Botanist, identified Boym as the first person to use ‘flora’ to define the plants of a particular region, habitat or geological period. Despite the title, it contains some animals, as well as a selection of choice plants, some of which are non-Chinese natives introduced from the Americas in the previous century, including guava (Psidium), papaya (Carica) and pineapple (Ananas) (fig. 2). Others, including cinnamon (Cinnamomum) (fig. 9), ginger (Zingiber) (fig. 3) and pepper (Piper), were important commodities of the spice trade.

Fig. 3. Zingiber (ginger). Boym, Michał Piotr. Flora sinensis. 1656. Digitized by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52239318.

Flora sinensis contains 48 pages of text and 23 black and white woodcut illustrations, 17 of plants, five of animals and one of a Nestorian Stele. Boym describes each species, its physical characteristics, common names, geographical distribution and medicinal virtues. The plates have titles in Chinese, transliterated into Latin, and in the Kew Gardens copy most of the Latin plant names have also been added to genus level.

Whilst the book was originally published uncoloured, some rare hand-coloured copies exist, notably at the Natural History Museum in London, Université de Namur, and SLUB Dresden.

Fig. 4. Flora sinensis 1696, French edition title page. Digitized by Boston Public Library. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/25193368.

In 1664, Melchisédech Thévenot published a 15 page French translation, Flora Sinensis, ou traité des fleurs, des fruits, des plantes et des animaux particuliers à la Chine In:Relations de divers voyages curieux : qui n'ont point esté publiées, est qu'on a traduit or tiré des originaux des voyageurs françois, espagnols, allemands, portugais, anglois, hollandois, persans, arabes & autres orientaux, the 1696 edition of which is available on BHL.

Fig. 5. Chinese leopard missing from the 1664 French edition. Boym, Michał Piotr. Flora sinensis. 1656. Digitized by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52239371.

Unfortunately the illustrations in this edition appear to be composites derived from the originals and some, notably the Chinese leopard (fig. 5), are not included. Flora sinensis was also the source for much of the natural history content of Athanasius Kircher’s China illustrata (1667).

Fig. 6. Composite plate of Cinnamomum, Musa (bananas) and an un-named plant. Flora sinensis, 1696 French edition. Digitized by Boston Public Library. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/25193501.

Michał Piotr Boym was born the son of a wealthy merchant in Lwów, Poland in 1612. He joined the Jesuits in 1629 and was ordained in 1641. He sailed from Lisbon in 1643, reaching Macao, via Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands, Mozambique, the Bay of Bengal, Siam, and Goa, in 1647.

Fig. 7. Avis regia, Rhabarbarum (possibly rhubarb) and Gallina sylvestris. Flora sinensis, 1696 French edition. Digitized by Boston Public Library. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/25193697.

It was probably in Mozambique that he observed the hippopotamus, illustrated in Flora Sinensis (fig. 8), and wrote an account of the natural history of Mozambique, one of the oldest works on Africa in Polish (Cafraria: a P.M. Boym Polono Missa Mozambique 1644 Januario 11).

Fig. 8. Hippopotamus from the original 1656 edition. Boym, Michał Piotr. Flora sinensis. 1656. Digitized by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives. http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52239327.

Boym taught and studied Chinese in Macao and started to write on medicine, natural history and Chinese society after he moved to Hainan. It was there that he founded a mission, but had to flee to Tonkin when the Manchus invaded the island. He was then sent on a diplomatic mission to the court of the last Ming dynasty ruler, the Emperor Yongli, in Guangxi.

In 1650, Boym left Zhaoqing carrying letters from the court to Pope Innocent X, requesting support against the Manchus. He arrived in Venice in 1652, where he began work on various publications, including Flora sinensis and Fondo Borgia Cinese 531. (The latter unpublished collection of 18 maps is still in the Vatican Library, and includes the first European map to include Korea as a peninsula, not an island. It also features Chinese topography and Chinese and transliterated place names). He finally reached Rome in 1653, but it was not until 1655 that he was granted an audience with Pope Alexander VII.

In 1656, Boym set out again from Lisbon to China, but only four of the eight priests accompanying him survived as far as Goa and the news from the Chinese court was ominous. He persevered, arriving in Siam in 1658, but died on 22 June 1659 somewhere in the province of Guangxi before reaching the emperor’s court. He has no known grave.

Fig. 9. Cinnamomum (cinnamon) on left. Boym, Michał Piotr. Flora sinensis. 1656. Digitized by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Library, Art & Archives. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52239309.

One of the plants described by Boym is a favourite Christmas spice. The rich spicy flavour of cinnamon (fig. 9) is a Christmas ingredient in recipes such as cakes, puddings, mince pies, Zimtsterne (Christmas stars), lebkuchen, mulled wine and glühwein. It was also used in medicine and as an ingredient of oils and perfumes.

Early trade in cinnamon to the Roman and Greek empires was controlled by Arab traders, who kept the source secret. It was thought, by both Herodotus and Theophrastus (4th and 5th century BC) to have come from Arabia, and locating the source was an ambition of 15th and 16th century European explorers.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, Venetian traders controlled the cinnamon trade in Europe until the Portuguese broke their monopoly when they arrived in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in the early 1500s, when cinnamon was one of the most highly prized and valuable spices in Europe. The Dutch expelled the Portuguese from the island in the mid 17th century, monopolising the trade and maintaining cinnamon’s rarity by refusing to allow commercial farming until the 1770s. The East India Company obtained control in 1796, when the Dutch were ousted, and retained it until 1833, when the cinnamon trade was opened to all.

Cinnamon is the prepared bark of Cinnamomum verum (synonym C. zeylanicum Bl., Laurus cinnamomum) in the family Lauraceae. It is indigenous to Sri Lanka and south India and widely cultivated in Sri Lanka (approximately 80% of total output), Indonesia, Java, Seychelles, Madagascar, South West Indies, Brazil, Martinique, and Jamaica.

Other items written by Boym include:

The first Chinese-Latin and Chinese-French dictionaries (1667).
Clavis medica ad Chinarum doctrinam de pulsibus. Nuremberg: Wolfgang Moritz Endter, 1686.
Specimen Medicinæ Sinicæ sive Opuscula Medica ad Mentem Sinensium Continens. A. Cleyer, ed. Francofvrti: Sumptibus Joannis Petri Zubrodt, 1682.

Bibliography:

Lehner, M. & Lehner, G. (2016) M.Boym: Flora Sinesis [online]. Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0. [Accessed 12 December 2016].
Davidson, A. (2006). The Oxford companion to food. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.186-187.
Hart, A. (2015). Michał Piotr Boym: Flora Sinensis In: J. Magee, ed., Rare treasures from the Library of the Natural History Museum. 1st ed. London: NHM, p. 38-45.
Jeong, S. (2016). The Silk Road Encyclopedia. Irvine, California: Seoul Selection. [Accessed 12 December 2016].
Rema, J. &. (2008). Cinnamon and cassia. In: V. P. Parthasarathy ed., Spice crops, Volume 2, tree spices. New Delhi: Today & Tomorrow’s, p. 29-75.
Van Wyk, B. E. (2013). Culinary herbs and spices of the world. Kew: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, p. 104.

Official Photo by Denisse Vargas

(A report from the 2016 TDWG meeting by BHL Program Director Martin R. Kalfatovic and BHL Vice-Chair Constance Rinaldo).

The 2016 TDWG Biodiversity Information Standards meeting was held at the Centro de Transferencia Tecnológica y Educación Continua (CTEC) in San Carlos, Costa Rica. Hotels and other activities were in La Fortuna, about a 45 minute bus ride from CTEC.

BHL was represented at the TDWG 2016 conference with a symposium, "BHL: 10 Years of Innovation and Growth". The panel consisted of:

Constance Rinaldo

BHL - 10 Years and More! (Martin R. Kalfatovic)
BHL: Grants and Growth (Constance Rinaldo)
BHL-SciELO Network (Henrique Rodrigues)
Towards extracting occurrence data from biodiversity literature (Dmitry Schigel)
Questions: BHL - 10 years of innovation & growth (Discussion led by Constance Rinaldo)

The session was attended by about 70 people. The conclusion of the session was a discussion with the audience about desires for the future direction of BHL and features or services that could be implemented as BHL explores refactoring the BHL platform. Among the topics mentioned by the audience were: integration of visual resources in BHL and expanding in-copyright material.

Dimitris Koureas, Cynthia Parr, Erick Mata

The TDWG organizers, led by the program committee - Dr. Erick Mata Montero (Professor, School of Computing, Costa Rica Institute of Technology); Gail Kampmeier (Prairie Research Institute, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois, USA); Francisco ("Paco") Pando (Real Jardín Botánico-CSIC, Spain); Maria Mora Instituto (Nacional de Biodiversidad, Costa Rica); Joel Sachs (Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canada); Manuel Vargas (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Costa Rica); Stan Blum (ex-officio TDWG Coordinator); and William Ulate (ex-officio TDWG Treasurer, Missouri Botanical Garden) - delivered an excellent program.

The keynote, by Dr. Rodrigo Gámez Lobo (founder and former Director General and President of the National Biodiversity Institute) explored the future of Costa Rican biodiversity as exemplified in his work On Biodiversity, People and Utopias (1999). His talk addressed the theme of this work, in which he states, "Our real goal is to make the society come to the understanding that, because of being something that directly affects quality of life, materially, intellectually and spiritually, we must preserve at all costs the rich biodiversity of the country".

Former BHL Technical Director William Ulate led a symposium on Semantics for Biodiversity Science: Challenges & Solutions. Ulate and co-author Riza Batista-Navarro spoke on "Real use cases for Semantic Information from the Mining Biodiversity project."

Another important symposium was Semantics for Biodiversity Science: Text Mining & Semantic Role Tagging. Key papers included:

Enhancing semantic search through the automatic construction of a Biodiversity Terminological Inventory (Nhung T.H. Nguyen, Georgios Kontonatsios, Axel J. Soto, Riza Batista-Navarro, Sophia Ananiadou)
Geographic entities extraction from biological textual sources (Moisés Alberto Acuña-Chaves)

Another symposium of note was Semantics for Biodiversity Science: Taxon Names & Traits. Key papers included:

What's in a name? Sense and reference in digital biodiversity information (Joakim Philipson)
Creating computable definitions for clades using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) (Gaurav Vaidya, Hilmar Lapp, Nico Cellinese)

Globally Unique Identifiers for Names (organized by Chuck Miller and Richard Pyle) included papers of interest to BHL:

Reviewing data integration and mobilisation using name reconciliation and identifier services (Nicky Nicolson, Robert Turner, Abigail Barker)
Implementing Name Identifiers for the World Flora Online (Chuck Miller)
Identifiers for Biodiversity Informatics: The Global Names Approach (Dmitry Y. Mozzherin, Richard Pyle)
The Catalogue of Life Editor's View on Globally Unique Identifiers for Names (Yuri Roskov)
Names and identifiers in the CyVerse cyberinfrastucture (Ramona L. Walls)
Utilizing Unique Identifiers for Taxonomic Concepts (Jeff Gerbracht)

Two papers of interest in the contributed papers session were a historical review of TDWG and a paper describing a new publishing practice that relies on extraction of highly relevant details (species descriptions, for example) from longer publications.

TDWG Then and Now (Arturo H. Ariño, Anabel Pérez de Zabalza)
Nanopublications for biodiversity: concept, formats and implementation (Lyubomir Penev, Éamonn Ó Tuama, Viktor Senderov, Pavel Stoev, Teodor Georgiev)

Volcán Arenal

A highlight of the meeting was the TDWG 2016 Bioblitz at the nearby Texas A&M Soltis Center. The bioblitz helped to create a biodiversity snapshot of TDWG 2016. Participants were encouraged to take the opportunity to observe and to post their pictures of local biodiversity. The event took place in a torrential rainstorm, but the event still provided some observations and camaraderie.

There were other opportunities to see some of Costa Rica's amazing biodiversity, among those sighted were:

Two-toed Sloth
(Choloepus hoffmanni)

Mammals

Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
Two-toed Sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni)
White-nosed Coati (Nasua narica)
Mantled Howler Monkey (Alouatta palliata)
Spider Monkey (Ateles geoffroyi)
White-throated Capuchin (Cebus capucinus)
Long-nosed bat (Rhynchonycteris naso)

Yellow-throated Toucan
(Ramphastos ambiguus)

Birds

Wood Stork (Mycteria americana)
Little Blue Heron (Egretta caerulea)
Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis)
Snowy Egret (Egretta thula)
Northern Jacana (Jacana spinosa)
Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)
Groove-billed Ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris)
Yellow-throated Toucan (Ramphastos ambiguus)
Green Kingfisher (Chloroceryle americana)
Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga)
White Ibis (Eudocimus albus)
Boat-billed Heron (Cochlearius cochlearius)

American Crocodile
(Crocodylus acutus)

Reptiles

Spectacled Caiman (Caiman crocodilus)
American Crocodile (Crocodylus acutus)
Emerald Basilisk (Basiliscus plumifrons)
Black River Turtle (Rhinoclemmys funerea)
Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina)
Green Iguana (Iguana iguana)

By Nura Agzamova
Smithsonian Libraries Intern
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Smithsonian Field Book Project

As the weather in Central New York is getting colder, and the winter is inevitably approaching, I can’t help but recall the humid summer of Washington, DC. Over the summer of 2016, I interned at Smithsonian Libraries. As a summer intern, I worked at the Department of Digital Programs and Initiatives on the “Cataloging across collections” project. The project was focused on metadata and cataloging. During my internship I worked on digital curation of the records in Biodiversity Heritage Library as well as cataloging field notes for the Field Book Project. Both aspects of my internship were coordinated by mentors assigned by the Smithsonian Libraries - Bianca Crowley, Digital Collections Manager of Biodiversity Heritage Library, and Lesley Parilla, Cataloging Coordinator of the Field Book Project. During my internship I met with Smithsonian Institution staff members, toured different departments, attended the staff picnic, and, most importantly, improved my understanding of the technical services in libraries.

Although working on metadata projects was quite challenging, it helped me to gain confidence as an information professional. As a librarian, I’ve always known that the information organization is important, but I didn’t realize how much properly maintained bibliographic descriptions can improve the user experience. Especially, when the audience can only interact with online assets. Biodiversity Heritage Library is a unique digital collection of the resources in Natural Sciences. My work focused on editing metadata for existing records, which included author merging, editing of volume information, title merging, and linking of the serial records. I received training in 2 internal systems, the Gemini Issue Tracker and BHL Administrative Dashboard to work on these tasks.

On the first week of my internship, I needed to link several volumes together. “Den Norske Nordhavs-expedition, 1876-1878” gives an account of the Norwegian North-Atlantic expedition in the 19th century, commanded by Carl Fredrik Wille, Captain of the Royal Navy. Since I have interest in Scandinavian languages, I enjoyed interacting with this resource. This and many other assignments throughout my internship taught me the importance of metadata standards. Seeing both librarian and user perspectives on the information-retrieval systems became an eye-opening experience for me.

"Den Norske Nordhavs-expedition, 1876-1878”, bd. 5, pt. 17 [Alcyonida], tab. I

“Den Norske Nordhavs-expedition, 1876-1878”, bd. 5, pt. 17 [Alcyonida], tab.

Further into my internship, I was trained to upload the scanned images into the Internet Archive, the platform that hosts the BHL assets. I used another internal system, Macaw, for this purpose. As I was uploading the new images, I assigned page-level metadata. One of the publications I was working with was Bonn Zoological Bulletin. I had so much fun working on the metadata-level description of William Mann’s scrapbook from his trip to South East Asia for the Field Book Project. One of my favorite serials was Canadian Forest Industries, a magazine that was renamed at least 6 times before its current title. While I was adding volume information and page level metadata, I encountered amazing illustrations and advertisement campaigns from Florists’ Review, that is a wonderful compilation of the marketing tools of the past.

Canadian Forest Industries, formerly known as Canadian Lumberman, Jan 1903.

Drawing from the Florists’ Review April 1913 v.31 no.797 (801) p.17

Front page of from the Florists’ Review December 1922, Christmas edition v. 51 no.1306

In addition to learning many essential skills for technical services in libraries, during my internship I worked with Camtasia software. Screen-casting was used to develop tutorials for BHL Staff about working in the BHL "Admin Dash." I recorded one video that focused on merging author records together. During the internship I also presented at a Brown Bag presentation in front of Smithsonian Libraries staff, my mentors, and other interns.

I would like to express gratitude to my mentors - Bianca Crowley, Digital Collections Manager at Biodiversity Heritage Library, and Lesley Parilla, Cataloging Coordinator of the Field Book Project, and the entire Department of Digital Programs and Initiatives for their guidance and support. I would also like to thank LIS Program Director at Syracuse University – Jill Hurst-Wahl, and my Academic Advisor – Barbara Stripling, for their invaluable insights on the US library system. My boundless gratitude goes to Cultural Vistas and the Edmund S. Muskie Internship Program that made it possible for me to intern in Washington, D.C. during the summer of 2016. Being a part of the Smithsonian Institution was an unforgettable life experience, which I will proudly carry with me throughout my library career!

By: Adriana Marroquin
Project Manager, BHL Field Notes Project

In 2015, the Council on Library and Information Resources awarded the Biodiversity Heritage Library a grant to fund the BHL Field Notes Project. Part of CLIR’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives initiative, this project is a collaborative undertaking which will provide open access to field notes from several different institutions. By project end, BHL users will have access to over 450,000 pages of natural history field research material. This rich source of field notes includes diaries, journals, correspondence, and photographs.

[Logbook of the yacht “France”]. v. 1 (1922-1926). Digitized by the American Museum of Natural History. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/51514493

The importance of field notes is well known to researchers. To natural scientists, field notes offer records of the flora and fauna of a location at a certain point in time. These records serve as reference points when observing how a certain habitat has changed over time. They can also offer information on expeditions, or the source of museum collection items. Field notes also present narratives that give insight into the scientists as people and their relationship with the locations and cultures they studied, making them an important resource for science historians.

George Engelmann : botanical notebook 5 : Mammilaria, Leuchtenbergia, Discocactus, and Melocactus. Box 3: Folder 13: Cactaceae: Mammillaria: 1857-1883 (1856). http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/52030722

The BHL has already started adding field notes to its collection, and the Field Notes Project hopes to add great value to the field notes already available. This project brings together the efforts of eleven institutions:

American Museum of Natural History
Field Museum of Natural History Library
Harvard University Botany Libraries
Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library
Internet Archive
LuEsther T. Mertz Library, The New York Botanical Garden
Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library & Center for Biodiversity Informatics
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Libraries
Yale Peabody Museum Archives

We are excited to be part of the effort to add more archival material to the BHL. Stay tuned for upcoming features which will highlight contributions from—and go behind-the-scenes at—some of our partners. In the meantime, explore some of the great field notes already digitized in the BHL Field Notes Project collection.

This quarter, the Biodiversity Heritage Library was pleased to welcome The Arboretum Library at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden as its newest Affiliate. The BHL consortium, which has grown substantially over the past year, now consists of 17 Members and 16 Affiliates.

The Arboretum Library holds an extensive collection of books, magazines, government documents, pamphlets, and audio-visual materials covering a wide range of topics, including gardening and garden design, plant lore, medical botany, botanical art, ethnobotany, California native plant life, and Mediterranean-climate botany.

Twenty-four magazine titles published by the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden are already available through BHL as a result of The Arboretum Library Good Family Foundation Digitization Project, a collaboration between the Arboretum, BHL, and the Missouri Botanical Garden. The publications, dating back to the 1950s, include information about the institution's history, Los Angeles area horticulture, and research conducted by Arboretum staff. The articles have been indexed for author, title, date, and subjects (including people and plant names), all of which are searchable.

The articles in the Arboretum publications have both a scientific and popular appeal. For example, among the many interesting topics covered is the history of coffee, which Leonid Enari explores in the June 1976 issue of Lasca Leaves.

According to the article, coffee was used as food at least by 800 AD, but the "habit of coffee drinking seems to have started in Arabia in the 15th century" (Enari 1976). The first beverages created from the berries of the coffee plant were likely alcoholic, made from the pulp of the berries. It is unknown when the practice of roasting the seeds (beans) and using them to prepare today's familiar coffee beverage was discovered, but its consumption in Europe was popularized through coffeehouses that were often regarded, particularly in England, by the church and state as "centers of political agitation."

Leaves and berries of Coffea arabica. Enari, Leonid. "Coffee."Lasca Leaves. v. 26 (1976). http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/41846781. Digitized by the Missouri Botanical Garden. CC-BY-NC-SA.

The Arabian coffee tree (Coffea arabica) is used for the majority of the world's commercial coffee production. The all-important coffee beans are the seeds of the coffee plant (found inside the plant's fruit) which have been dried and roasted. After being roasted and ground, coffee will lose most of its aroma and flavor within 10 days. You can learn more about the history of coffee and its commercial production in the Lasca Leaves article.

The existing and future contributions from the Arboretum Library will provide valuable access to information about the history of botany and horticulture, botany in Southern California, and the Arboretum's impact on these research areas. We look forward to working with our newest Affiliate to enhance BHL's collections and expand our service to the global botanical, horticultural, and wider research communities.

In the early eighteenth century, English naturalist Mark Catesby set foot in a New World. After spending the better part of ten years, spread across two separate trips, exploring and documenting North America's rich biodiversity, he would eventually publish his research and original artworks as the first fully illustrated book on the flora and fauna of North America.

Catesby, Mark. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. v. 1, ed. 1. pl. 19. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40753174.

Published over eighteen years between 1729-1747, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands contains 220 plates based mostly upon Catesby's own watercolors, which he worked up based on sketches he made in the field.

The success of Catesby's work was based largely on his emphasis on personal observation and use of art to convey a visual record of his research.

Over 250 years later, students in South Carolina are following Catesby's example.

As part of a collaboration with the Catesby Commemorative Trust, Dr. Tracey Hunter-Doniger used illustrations from The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islandsas the foundation for lesson plans designed to help students learn more about the importance of observation and the relationship between art and science.

"Before photography, scientists used drawings to record what they saw. Scientists also had to be artists. These lessons are an opportunity for students to see how art and science are connected while also understanding the importance of Catesby's work and his role in natural history," emphasizes Tracey.

Dr. Tracey Hunter-Doniger. Image Credit: College of Charleston website http://teachered.cofc.edu/faculty-staff-listing/hunter-doniger-tracey.php.

A fifteen year K-8 visual art education veteran, Tracey has spent the last five years at the College of Charleston as an Assistant Professor of Creativity and Creative Arts in Education. In the fall of 2016, Tracey teamed up with her friend Erin Russell, the art teacher at Memminger Elementary School in Charleston, SC, to implement a trial run of her lesson plans in the 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade art classes at Memminger.

All three classes were challenged to use their powers of observation to record what they saw, just as Catesby had done centuries before. Students were given copies of Catesby's illustrations, which Tracey downloaded and printed from the Biodiversity Heritage Library. The first edition copy of Catesby's masterpiece in BHL, digitized from the Joseph F. Cullman Rare Book Library at Smithsonian Libraries, is one of the few known perfect copies of this edition in existence.

"Having access to this resource through BHL is a treasure," praises Tracey. "Being able to show the students the prints of the original artworks and use them to explain that these represent what Catesby saw and what he wanted to convey speaks volumes to the students."

The first grade students were instructed to use the illustrations as a reference to draw their own copy of the specimens. The third and fifth graders were asked to flex their observational skills even further by not only copying the illustration as they saw it, but also homing in on a specific section of the image and creating a more detailed depiction of that area, as though they were looking at it through the lens of a microscope.

Example of the 3rd and 5th grade Catesby lesson, whereby students "zoom" in on details in the specimen being observed. Example by Dr. Tracey Hunter-Doniger.

While the trial runs of each class were limited to one, 45-minute session, Tracey believes that the lessons helped the students understand how art can be a scientific tool. For future iterations, she hopes to run the classes as three-week lessons where students start by observing and copying Catesby's art in the classroom and then extend their learning to the outdoors by taking nature walks and drawing in the field, as Catesby did. She would also love the students to have the opportunity to explore Catesby's publication in full through the BHL website.

"Access is key," stresses Tracey. "In an ideal scenario, we would go into the website, we would do research, and then we would practice the skills we learn by going into the field. We would 'do' as Catesby did. We would 'be' Catesby in the field."

The lessons that Tracey created are just two of several that are being developed as part of a collaboration with the Catesby Commemorative Trust and the College of Charleston. For example, a science lesson, written by William Veal, Cyndi Hall, and Rodney Moore, uses Catesby's art to help students assess how adaptations contribute to a species' ability to survive in a given environment. Lesson activities include drawing a bird inspired by a Catesby illustration, noting characteristics (such as beak shape), and performing experiments to see how various adaptations might help that species survive.

The lessons plans resulting from this collaboration are being made available to teachers in South Carolina through the LearningWhy site created by South Carolina ETV. Eventually, the plans will also be made available to teachers across the country through PBS LearningMedia.

Catesby, Mark. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. v. 2, ed. 1, pl. 17. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40680449.

From Tracey's perspective, the use of Catesby's material in these lesson plans is a powerful way to integrate primary source material that is not only historically significant but also highly relevant to the area where she and her students live.

"Living in an area that's so rich in history, it's very impactful to be able to show the students how Catesby's story fits into that history," says Tracey. "The art is the visual side of that narrative. It helps explain who Catesby was, what he did, and why he was important. If you're telling the Catesby story, the art is a critical part of that story."

Thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Smithsonian Libraries, students in South Carolina and others around the world can freely and easily access Catesby's work and countless other natural history treasures, no matter where their classroom journeys take them.

By Siobhan Leachman
BHL Citizen Scientist (Learn more)
Twitter: @SiobhanLeachman

You too can be like a librarian … a Biodiversity Heritage Library librarian! The Biodiversity Heritage Library wants people to use its resources, and Wikipedia is encouraging librarian-minded folk to add citations to articles via their #1Lib1Ref campaign (15 January - 3 February 2017). Talk about a perfect match. You can help by adding citations from BHL to Wikipedia.

Don’t worry if you haven’t edited Wikipedia before. What follows is an easy “How to” guide to adding a citation from works held in BHL to a Wikipedia article.

Create a Wikipedia Account

Your first step is to create a Wikipedia account. Although you can edit Wikipedia without an account, if you create one, you can use Wikipedia’s fabulously easy “Visual Editor” tool. This comes with a feature which allows for ease of citation of references. Click hereto see how to create an account and how to enable the Visual Editor tool.

Find an Article

Your second step is to find an article that needs to be improved with added citations. One way is to use the Wikimedia Citation Hunt tool. When using this tool, I narrow my search to articles which need the Biodiversity Heritage Library resources. I do this by filling in the “What makes you tick” box with a search term. In the example below, I’ve added “Beetles” to find beetle articles that need citations, but there are many other terms you could use. For example, try “mosses”, “Fish of Canada”, “lizards” or any subject you are interested in.

In the above case, to find the needed citation I would put “Myxophaga” (a suborder of Coleoptera or beetles) in the search box on the BHL website and see if I could find any article, journal or book in BHL supporting the statement in the Wikipedia article to which I want to add a citation.

You can also work from the other end and find an article in BHL that you can then cite in Wikipedia. So for example I found this article which first describes the Pericoptus frontalis beetle. This is an article that can and should be cited in the Pericoptus frontalis beetle Wikipedia page.

Citing Reference in Wikipedia

So you’ve logged in to Wikipedia, enabled the Visual Editor tool, and found the article in BHL you want to cite. Now go to the page you want to edit and click on the “Edit” tab so that the Visual Editor edit bar appears.

Place your cursor in the Wikipedia article where you wish to add the citation and then press “cite” on the edit bar.

The “add a citation” box should then appear.

You then have a choice of either using the “Automatic”, “Manual” or “Reuse” citation method. If you have the URL, DOI or PMID of the article, you can use the “Automatic” citation tool to generate a citation. Alternatively, use the “Manual” citation, which will give you different options to choose from depending on where you obtained your citation. The image above shows you the manual citation options.

In this case, I’m citing an article in a journal rather than a book or a newspaper article, so I would choose the “Journal” option. Clicking on “Journal” brings up a template. Fill in all the information you can in the appropriate boxes and then press “Insert” on the top right of the box.

Pressing “insert” brings up a “Save your changes” box asking you to briefly describe the changes you’ve made to the article. Make sure you add the hashtag #1Lib1Ref to your edit summary as this will add your edit to the campaign total.

You then press the “Save changes” button and with that you have added a citation to Wikipedia!

For further Information on the Wikipedia #1Lib1Ref campaign, click here.

Follow #ILib1Ref on social media, 15 January - 3 February 2017 to learn more about the campaign and see how adding citations to Wikipedia can improve the resource for everyone!

If you have questions or get stuck, see this page to learn more about the various outlets you can use to find help and information. You can also tweet BHL at @BioDivLibrary or Siobhan at @SiobhanLeachman.

This is part of a series of monthly posts related to the IMLS-funded Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) grant. The project, which solicits new content through 2017, is aimed at enhancing BHL's collection by digitizing valuable and unique material from natural-history related organizations in the U.S. that are outside the BHL consortium. Learn more, and find past blogs, at the EABL wiki.

Boston Rd. entrance, Bronx Zoo, 1911
(courtesy New York Public Library)

The New York Zoological Society (NYZS) was chartered in 1895. Its founders were Andrew H. Green, planner of some of New York City's most important cultural institutions; Henry Fairfield Osborn, professor and curator at the American Museum of Natural History; and Madison Grant, a lawyer and conservationist. The latter two were members of the Boone and Crockett Club, a group of hunters and conservationists founded by fellow New York naturalist Theodore Roosevelt. From the start, this influential coalition dedicated itself to the three "objects of the society," outlined in the first Annual Report of 1897:

The establishment of a free zoological park containing collections of North American and exotic animals, for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public, the zoologist, the sportsman and every lover of nature.
The systematic encouragement of interest in animal life, or zoology, amongst all classes of the people, and the promotion of zoological science in general.
Co-operation with other organizations in the preservation of the native animals of North America, and encouragement of the growing sentiment against their wanton destruction.

The first goal was realized in 1899 with the opening of the Bronx Zoo, originally called the New York Zoological Park. William Hornaday, the founder of the National Zoo, selected the site, chose curators and staff, and became its first director.

William T. Hornaday
(courtesy New York Public Library)

In 1902, New York City gave the NYZS control of the New York Aquarium, located at the time in Battery Park, Manhattan (and since 1957 in Coney Island, Brooklyn). By 1993, when the NYZS changed its name to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the city had handed over the reins of three other wildlife parks: the Central Park Zoo, the Queens Zoo, and the Prospect Park Zoo.

Just as it had wasted no time in opening a "free zoological park," the NYZS set about accomplishing its second and third goals in short order. On the conservation front, Hornaday was particularly concerned about the state of America's large mammals, decimated by unchecked hunting. He acquired seven American buffalo (bison) for the Bronx Zoo in 1899; these were used several years later to help reestablish western U.S. populations teetering on the brink of extinction.

"Winter on the Buffalo Range," from
Fourth Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society, 1900, p.50

Also in 1899, Hornaday hired William C. Beebe as curator of ornithology. Beebe traveled the world doing field research for the Zoo, but his interest was not confined to birds; in 1922 he founded a Department of Tropical Research, and in 1934—on behalf of that department—he descended in a bathysphere to observe the deep sea in the waters off Bermuda. Later on, he turned his attention to insects and reptiles. Much of his research is presented in Zoologica, the scientific journal that NYZS published from 1907 to 1973.

Black sawtoothed eel, Serrivomer brevidentatus,
from Zoologica v.20, no.3, 1936, p.94

In 1940, Henry Fairfield Osborn Jr, son of the NYZS founding member of the same name, was appointed director. Over the next 22 years, he worked to expand the conservation work of the NYZS, establishing programs in Africa and Southeast Asia. William Conway, who took over as director of the zoo in 1962 and president of the NYZS in 1992, used the zoo to breed endangered species. Today, as the Wildlife Conservation Society, the organization is at work in hundreds of conservation programs around the world and continues to attract visitors to its wildlife parks in New York City.

BHL and the EABL team are grateful to the WCS for granting permission to digitize the complete run of Zoologica, a journal of tremendous scientific importance. Zoologica has been digitized by Smithsonian Libraries and the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. It is now indexed by article and, together with the other NYZS publications in BHL, chronicles the history and research of one of the world's most important conservation organizations.

Patrick Randall
Community Manager
Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature

Reference

"History."WCS Library & Archives. Accessed January 18, 2017. http://ielc.libguides.com/wcs/archives_history

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to welcome the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) as a new Member. UTL is the first Canadian library to join the Biodiversity Heritage Library as a Member.

The University of Toronto Libraries system is the largest academic library in Canada. Ranked fourth among North American peer institutions by the Association of Research Libraries, the UTL system is particularly strong in the sciences and includes 10 dedicated science libraries. Among these is the Gerstein Science Information Centre, Canada’s largest standalone science and health library. Additionally, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library holds rich collections on the history of science and medicine, including an exhaustive collection of original works by Charles Darwin.

“The University of Toronto Libraries is thrilled to become a Member of the Biodiversity Heritage Library,” asserts Neil Romanosky, UTL’s Associate Chief Librarian for Science Research and Information and Director of the Gerstein Science Information Centre. “Given the rapid rate of extinction of species across the globe, we see membership in BHL as an important opportunity to support the search for knowledge by preserving our wealth of historic biodiversity materials and sharing them more widely.”

Martyn, Thomas. Thirty-eight plates, with explanations; intended to illustrate Linnaeus's System of vegetables, and particularly adapted to the Letters on the elements of botany [by J.J. Rousseau] By Thomas Martyn. (1799). Art by Frederick Polydore Nodder. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/32193301. Digitized by University of Toronto Libraries from the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

As a BHL Member, the University of Toronto Libraries will enhance BHL’s collection by contributing rare and unique material from its holdings of over 12 million print volumes. As the host of an Internet Archive (IA) scanning center, the Libraries has already digitized a large portion of its collection. Over 3.3 million pages of natural history literature from UTL are currently available in BHL.

“The University of Toronto Libraries and BHL share a commitment to open access and the promotion of digital scholarship through global partnerships and the development of innovative tools and technology,” affirms BHL Program Director Martin R. Kalfatovic. “We look forward to the expertise and leadership that UTL will bring to the BHL consortium as we work together to build our online collection, enhance our services, and empower researchers around the world through free access to biodiversity knowledge.”

The BHL consortium now consists of 18 Members and 15 Affiliates.

Cetaceans and Cephalopods: Supporting the Work of Collections Managers One Specimen at a Time

Kirtlandia and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Origins of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Kirtlandia

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

A field book at the end of a collecting career

Black Friday Sale Nov. 23-27! Save 10% Off in the BHL Store

Holmes, Shells, and the Intersection of Art & Science

Announcing the New Holiday Collection in the BHL Store!

Biodiversity Heritage Library Welcomes Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle as a New Member

BHL participates in meetings at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris)

Poetic Botany: A Digital Exhibition Celebrating the History of Botany

Expanding Access Project: The Year in Review

Background

Process

Results

Get Involved

Internet Archive Library Leaders Forum 2016

Some of the coolest new features highlighted:

Michał Piotr Boym’s Flora sinensis, fructus floresque humillime [Flora of China, fruits and flowers].

TDWG 2016 meeting, La Fortuna & Alajuela Province, San Carlos, Costa Rica

Reflecting back on my incredible summer at Smithsonian Libraries

Introducing the BHL Field Notes Project

BHL Welcomes the Arboretum Library at the LA County Arboretum and Botanic Garden

Catesby in the Classroom: Students Explore the Intersection of Art and Science

Be Like a BHL Librarian and Edit Wikipedia for #1Lib1Ref

Create a Wikipedia Account

Find an Article

Citing Reference in Wikipedia

The New York Zoological Society

BHL Adds University of Toronto Libraries as a New Member