The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) has welcomed a new member: the Library of Congress. The fifteenth partner of the BHL, the Library of Congress will contribute to the digitization of historical science literature in the collection. All material will be online, free and available to the public.
“The Biodiversity Heritage Library is the preeminent global repository for historic science literature,” said Martin Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Libraries Associate Director for Digital Services and BHL Program Director. “We are excited that the Library of Congress has joined us in this effort, which is a vast information center providing resources to researchers, students and the general public interested in biodiversity.”
The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 151 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.
Headquartered at the Smithsonian Libraries, the Biodiversity Heritage Library is the literature digitization component of the Encyclopedia of Life, a global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants and other forms of life on Earth. BHL is a consortium major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries and research institutions. Its goal is to contribute to the global “biodiversity commons” by digitizing and aggregating the resources housed within each of the participating institutions, providing free and open access to the legacy literature that underpins the work of the natural science community. To further explore the BHL, visit http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/.
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