Discover biodiversity heritage materials with the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Every so often we will feature specific Open Access resources on our blog that we think may be of interest to some of our readers. This week, it’s the turn of the The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)

BHL is an Open Access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives, curated by a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries, working together to digitise their collections and make them openly available as part of a “global diversity commons”.

The BHL has digitized millions of pages of taxonomic literature, representing tens of thousands of titles and more than 100,000 volumes. Go to the BHL Portal to search by multiple access points, read the texts online, or download select pages or entire volumes as PDF files. The collection includes rare titles only available in a few libraries throughout the world, and includes literature about the biota existing in developing countries, where these materials may not be easily accessible. These collections are of particular value in the domain of systematic biology which depends, more than many other sciences, upon historic literature. In addition to the literature BHL makes sets of biodiversity illustrations and photos available on Flickr.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, why not like and share it – and pay us, the Cardiff University Open Access team a digital visit.