The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has re-harvested all BHL data for ingest into its portal.  Before the harvest, BHL had just over 123,000 items in DPLA. This number rose to over 187,000 items after the re-harvest. This not only represents a 52% increase in BHL records in DPLA, but more importantly, the quality of those records has improved and is now in sync with BHL. Learn more .

What is the role of cats in society? They were revered in ancient times, despised in the Middle Ages, and grew in popularity as domestic pets by the middle of the 19th century.

The Library of Congress explores the history of cats in society from 1858-1922 in a new BHL book collection, digital exhibition, and series of blog posts. Learn more.

Curtis's Botanical Magazine. v. 111 (1885). Art by Matilda Smith. Digitized by the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Curtis's Botanical Magazine is the world's longest-running botanical magazine, representing two centuries of botanical history and discovery. The Magazine is most famous for its illustrations, many of which depict plants being scientifically described for the first time. 

Through collaboration with BHL Australia and the National Herbarium of New South Wales, BHL has launched a citizen science project challenging  volunteers to add tags for taxonomic names and geographic locations to the Magazine's illustrations in BHL's Flickr. These tags will enhance the discoverability of the images and allow them to be shared with other biodiversity portals like the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). 

Learn more about how you can get involved today.

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was one of the most important botanists of the 19th century and Kew Gardens' most illustrious Director (1865-1885). To mark the bicentenary of his birth this year, BHL joined the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in a celebration of Hooker's life and contributions to science. 

During the #JDHooker2017 social media campaign (26-30 June 2017), BHL and Kew Gardens highlighted Hooker's works through social media posts, blog articles, and book and image collections. 

Highlights from the campaign included Hooker's handwritten Antarctic Journal, which was recently digitized in BHL by Kew Gardens and details Hooker's time as Assistant Surgeon on the HMS Erebus as part of Ross's expedition to the Antarctic (1839-1843), and his  The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya, which introduced many new species of Rhododendron to Europe in the mid 19th century.

Learn more about the campaign and explore other J.D.Hooker events hosted by Kew Gardens.

Alicia Esquivel (Chicago Botanic Garden) and Ariadne Rehbein (Missouri Botanical Garden) presenting the BHL NDSR Residents' "Halfway Remarks" poster at the 2017 ALA Annual Conference.

As part of a  National Digital Stewardship Residency project,   Foundations to Actions , five residents stationed at geographically-dispersed BHL partner institutions are helping to plan the future of BHL. Over the course of 2017, each BHL NDSR resident will work on specific projects aimed at improving BHL tools and services and enhancing connections among museums, archives, and biodiversity databases.

Now mid-way through their working year, the residents have made significant progress towards their individual project goals. Highlights include the launch of a BHL user survey, interviews with Flickr taggers and Science Gossip contributors, exploration into ways to connect digitized specimens with biodiversity literature references, experimentation with BHL metadata in Wikidata, and statistical analysis methods to calculate the size of biodiversity literature. 

Learn more about the residents' progress to date.

Foundations to Actions is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Expanding Access staff and attendees at the EABL pre-conference workshop at CBHL.

The Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, is helping libraries, museums, and natural history societies make their content more widely available by facilitating contribution to the DPLA through BHL.

On 6 June 2017, members of the EABL project team hosted a pre-conference workshop at the annual Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL) meeting. The workshop training covered a variety of topics including collection development, the Digital Public Library of America, metadata, imaging standards, BHL related tools, and defining articles within BHL. The three-hour session was well attended, and some attendees are expected to contribute to BHL in the upcoming months while others have already added content through Expanding Access.

Learn more about the workshop and EABL's attendance at the CBHL conference.