Donna Ferguson, The Guardian; A bonanza for fans of the natural world: the digital library sharing 64m pages of scientific knowledge with everyone
"Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.
This week, a report from Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew revealed the crucial role digitisation is playing in “transforming our ability to understand and respond to the climate and biodiversity crises”, but it was the creation of the BHL 20 years ago that first demonstrated how bringing centuries of scientific knowledge online can unlock transformative discoveries and insights about the natural world.
David Iggulden, who chairs the BHL executive committee alongside his job as head of data and digital, library and archives at RBG Kew, describes the library as an invaluable and “absolutely essential” resource for scientists in the field. But it is also used by scientific researchers, environmental historians, educators, art historians, artists, citizen scientists and members of the public who – like Iggulden – simply enjoy browsing its contents on a rainy weekend.
“I just get caught up in it sometimes, looking at the various collections,” he says. “I think it’s amazing that we can explore such a vast array of different collections from very different institutions.”
As well as published biodiversity literature and journals, there are letters, illustrations, climate records, field diaries, ecosystem profiles, distribution records and manuscripts containing the original collecting stories of a particular species or detailing voyages of discovery."
