The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) was created in 2006 with 10 founding partners. It has grown to include 20 member institutions and 4 affiliate organizations who contribute content from their biological literature collections. BHL makes over 44 million pages of literature openly available online. It has expanded globally and sees increasing mobile usage. BHL aims to digitize all literature related to natural history and make it freely accessible to accelerate biodiversity research and education worldwide.

3. 2006 BHL is created
10 US and UK partners

4. Technology Library Science
Biodiversity Heritage Library

5. 20 Members and Affiliates
16 Members
• American Museum of Natural History
• California Academy of Sciences Library
• Cornell University Library
• Harvard University Botany Libraries
• Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of
Comparative Zoology
• Library of Congress
• Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution Library
• Missouri Botanical Garden Library
• National Library Board (Singapore)
• Natural History Museum, London
• The New York Botanical Garden
• Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
• Smithsonian Libraries
• United States Geological Survey Libraries
• Washington University of St. Louis
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
4 Affiliates
•Academy of Natural Sciences
•The Field Museum
• Natural History Museum, LA County
• Chicago Botanic Garden

6. Secretariat and Technical Staff
August 2011Program Director
Program Manager
Collections Coordinator
Outreach Manager
Technical Director
Programmer
Data Analyst

8. Global BHL
BHL Central | BHL Africa | BHL Australia | BHL Brasil | BHL
China | BHL Egypt | BHL Europe | BHL Singapore

9. 44,275,6637 pages
141,770 items
78,960 titles
21 July 2014
Content Growth
2007-2014

10. 2007
2014
146,798 visitors | November 2012
User Statistics: 2013 – 2014 (March)
Unique Visitors: 664,645 / 55,387 per month
Page Views: 3,741,640
New vs. Returning: 54.94% vs. 45.06%

11. 233 countriesUsers in 245 Countries

12. TheMachineIsUs/ingUs
<Response
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-
instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Status>ok</Status>
<Result>
<Item>
<ItemID>16800</ItemID>
<Volume/>
<Contributor>MBLWHOI Library</Contributor>
<Sponsor>MBLWHOI Library</Sponsor>
<Language>English</Language>
<LicenseUrl/>
<Rights/>
<DueDiligence/>
<CopyrightStatus/>
<CopyrightRegion/>
</Item>

13. 87,594 mobile visits (32% iPad)
March 2013 – March 2014
35,231 mobile visits (45% iPad)
March 2012 – March 2013

14. Funder: Institute of Museum and Library Services
($174,724 for US partners)
Partners: Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri
Botanical Garden, (US); National Centre for Text Mining,
University of Manchester, (UK); Big Data Analytics Institute
and Social Media Lab, Dalhousie University, (CAN).
Also participating: Smithsonian Institutions and
Encyclopedia of Life.

15. 24+ million total views | 89K + images (March 2014)

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Currently assiging CrossRef
Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
to all monographs.
Exploring options with CrossRef
for assigning at other levels (e.g.
articles/ segments / treatments)
Working with members of the
bioinformatics community to
address other needs for DOIs
Digital Object Identifiers

18. Field Notes and Archival Materials

19. Increase agreements
with publishers of in
copyright materials
US Titles: 249
UK Titles: 69
TOTAL TITLES: 318
US Licensors: 92
UK Licensors: 41
TOTAL LICENSORS: 133
October 2013

20. Bouchout Declaration Signatory
http://bouchoutdeclaration.org
/
Our natural world is a source of food, water, resources,
protection and enjoyment that our society needs. The richness
and complexity of nature, and the speed of new discoveries
made possible by genomic and digital technologies, challenge
us to find new ways to benefit from and be better custodians of
the natural world. Digital information management systems
can bring together the wealth of information now dispersed in a
myriad of different documents, institutions, and locations. With
such systems, we can harness the benefits of rapid discovery
and open up our legacy of over 260 years of biological
observations.

21. “
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May I compliment you on
this splendid service? The
Library's invaluable for my
work on seasonal variability
of climate and vector-borne
disease in British India,
1875-1940.

22. Looking Forward
In any well-appointed
Natural History Library
there should be found
every book and every
edition of every book
dealing in the remotest
way with the subjects
concerned.
Charles Davies Sherborn
Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922

23. Community / Partnership / Science / Content

24. Thank you!