The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), in its global efforts to digitize biodiversity literature and make it freely available to the world, ensures that this precious knowledge is available to everyone, everywhere. The BHL currently provides access to over 42 million pages and over 87,000 images and is changing the face of research methodology. Scientists around the world are using BHL to identify and classify species, facilitate further scientific research, and support conservation efforts to prevent extinctions.
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives / Unbound
It is with warm wishes that we send off four retiring employees! Best of luck to Alice, Ann, Dave, and Ron!
The Smithsonian Libraries will offer new, paid internships for the Professional Development Program in the summer of 2014. These internships are open to graduate students interested in working in research and museum libraries. The Libraries will award up to three paid summer internships this academic year.
The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library recently acquired Ippolito Salviani’s Aquatilium animalium historiae (Rome, 1554), a classic, foundational work on fishes. The book is one of three 16th-century works that established ichthyology as a modern science. The Libraries holds the other two – Belon’s De aquatilibus (1553, a Latin translation of his Histoire de la nature des estranges poissons marins, 1551) and Rondelet’s Libri de piscibus marinis (1554) – and has now completed the trio. The Aquatilium animalium historiae is a tremendous asset for the National Museum of Natural History’s curators in the Division of Fishes, who advised on the purchase.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is profiled in Searching for Sustainability: Strategies from Eight Digitized Special Collections, a major study funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and conducted by Ithaka S+R in partnership with the Association of Research Libraries. The study shares good practices for teams planning for and managing digitized resources.
On January 15, the Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the Office of the Chief Information Officer presented the first talk of a new lecture series, The Open Access Future, to address the Smithsonian Institution on the future of libraries, museums, and archives in a digital world. In 2014, the series will feature speakers with expertise in topics such as scholarly publishing, research data curation and communication, and altmetrics.
Situated at the center of the world’s largest museum complex, the Smithsonian Libraries is a vital part of the research, exhibition, and educational enterprise of the Institution. Each Smithsonian scholar engages in an individual voyage of discovery using the artifacts and specimens of the Smithsonian Institution in conjunction with the Libraries’ written and illustrated record of the past. The Libraries is uniquely positioned to help scholars understand the continuing vitality of this relationship, via exceptional research resources ranging from 13th-century manuscripts to electronic journals.