The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) has entered a new chapter.
Following a year of careful planning, consultation, and community engagement, BHL has successfully transitioned to a more resilient, community-supported model designed to safeguard open access to biodiversity knowledge for the long term.
This transition builds on nearly two decades of global collaboration and reflects BHL’s shared commitment to openness, sustainability, and collective stewardship. With new fiscal sponsorship in place and strong engagement from partners around the world, BHL is now better positioned to pursue diversified funding, new partnerships, and long-term sustainability.
2025: A Year of Transition and Renewal
In April 2025, BHL announced that the Smithsonian Institution would no longer host the administrative functions of the consortium after 1 January 2026. This marked the beginning of a planned transition period focused on strengthening BHL’s governance, funding, and operational resilience.
Rather than signaling an end, this became an opportunity to re-examine how BHL is supported, governed, and sustained, and to ensure the infrastructure underpinning this global resource remains robust and adaptable.
Major Milestones
Since announcing the transition, BHL has shared regular updates with its global community. Key milestones include:
- April 2025 – BHL announces the transition and outlines a path forward
- May 2025 – Appointment of a Transition Director and Communications Director; formation of a dedicated Transition Team
- June 2025 – Release of BHL’s official Call for Support
- August 2025 – BHL welcomes the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) as its new fiscal sponsor
- September 2025 – Publication of BHL’s Guiding Principles for the Transition
- November 2025 – Launch of the public fundraising campaign to Give BHL Wings
- December 2025 – BHL welcomes the first of its new Members: the University of South Florida Libraries
- February 2026 – BHL announces the Field Museum as new host of technical infrastructure
- March 2026 – BHL welcomes new Member: Vanderbilt University Heard Libraries
- April 2026 – BHL welcomes new Member: Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
- June 2026 – BHL moves its technical infrastructure to the Field Museum
Together, these milestones reflect the breadth of community engagement and institutional commitment shaping BHL’s next phase.
What Comes Next
With the core elements of the transition now in place, BHL’s focus is on consolidation and growth. The coming period will prioritise:
- Strengthening long-term governance and funding models
- Continuing philanthropic and institutional fundraising
- Advancing modern, open infrastructure and services
- Deepening partnerships across the global biodiversity and open-science communities
Updates on this work will continue to be shared via the BHL blog and social media channels.
Guiding Principles for the Transition (2025–2026)
BHL’s transition has been guided by a shared set of principles that reflect the consortium’s values and long-term vision. Together with the BHL Strategic Plan (2020–2026), these principles provide a framework for decision-making and future development.
- We are committed to open access and open infrastructure to ensure biodiversity knowledge is freely available, reusable, and sustainable.
- We are a community-led, openly governed global consortium, building capacity that is resilient to institutional change and funding cycles.
- We deliver inclusive collections and equitable services that advance open science, while respecting legal, cultural, and conservation considerations.
- We are committed to modernizing our infrastructure to create a flexible, secure, and sustainable platform – prioritizing accessibility and global participation through multilingual, mobile-responsive design and equitable access.
- We surface and structure the data in biodiversity literature, in alignment with FAIR principles, enabling its discovery, reuse, and integration across the biodiversity research ecosystem.
- We connect past, present, and future by transforming BHL’s 63 million pages of biodiversity literature – the world’s collective knowledge about biodiversity – into an indispensable open resource for research, conservation, and education worldwide.
BHL Call for Support
BHL’s Call for Support formally closed on 31 August 2025. The Transition Team and Executive Committee have reviewed expressions of interest and offers of support received during this period, which have directly informed the consortium’s future direction.
Additional expressions of interest and conversations about partnership or support are still welcome on a rolling basis. To learn more, please review the Call for Support or contact BHL at [email protected].
BHL is deeply grateful to the many individuals and organisations who have contributed their time, expertise, resources, and advocacy during this transition.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
These FAQs address common questions about BHL’s recent transition, including its current status, governance, fiscal sponsorship, technical infrastructure, and ways to support BHL going forward. They reflect BHL’s position following the completion of its primary transition milestones and entry into a new operational phase.
BHL’s New Chapter
Following a major organizational and technical transition in 2025–2026, BHL has entered a new chapter as an independent, resilient, and globally supported consortium.
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) now provides BHL’s administrative and financial home, while the Field Museum hosts its core technical infrastructure. BHL remains a community-led consortium governed through its Members Council and Executive Committee, with its work coordinated by the BHL Secretariat and Technical Team in collaboration with its Members and Affiliates. It is funded through institutional dues, donations, philanthropic funding, and the contributions of its global community of users, content providers, and biodiversity partners.
With these foundations in place, BHL is now focused on long-term sustainability, platform modernization, new partnerships, and ensuring that biodiversity knowledge remains freely available to everyone.
In April 2025, BHL announced that the Smithsonian Institution would no longer host the consortium’s administrative and technical operations after 1 January 2026.
This required BHL to establish new arrangements for its staff, financial administration, fundraising, technical infrastructure, and day-to-day operations. It also created an opportunity to strengthen BHL’s organizational foundations, develop a more distributed and resilient operating model, and reduce its reliance on any single institution.
BHL moved from a model in which its central administrative, financial, staffing, and technical functions were hosted by the Smithsonian Institution to a distributed, partner-supported structure.
Key changes included:
- establishing the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) as BHL’s fiscal sponsor and administrative home;
- transferring BHL’s financial administration, contracting, fundraising, and employment arrangements to CLIR;
- moving BHL’s core technical infrastructure from the Smithsonian Institution to the Field Museum;
- strengthening BHL’s communications and fundraising capacity; and
- developing a stronger foundation for the long-term sustainability and modernization of BHL.
BHL’s mission, identity, commitment to open access, and community-led governance remain unchanged.
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) provides BHL’s administrative and financial home through a fiscal sponsorship arrangement.
CLIR supports BHL through financial management, contracting, grant administration, charitable donation processing, and employment support. This enables BHL to operate without establishing a separate legal entity, while retaining its own mission, identity, governance, and global partnerships.
Fiscal sponsorship does not mean that CLIR owns, governs, or funds BHL. BHL remains responsible for securing the revenue needed to sustain its staff, infrastructure, services, and programs.
The Field Museum, one of BHL’s long-standing Member institutions, hosts BHL’s core technical infrastructure.
In June 2026, BHL’s servers and associated systems were successfully moved from the Smithsonian Institution to the Field Museum. The Field Museum now supports the continued operation of the BHL website, database, APIs, and associated services.
This arrangement is an important part of BHL’s more distributed and partner-supported operating model.
BHL remains a community-led global consortium governed through its Bylaws, Members Council, and Executive Committee. Its committees, working groups, and wider community also contribute expertise and help guide BHL’s strategic direction, collections, services, partnerships, and technical development.
BHL is funded through a combination of:
- dues from Member and Affiliate institutions;
- grants and philanthropic funding;
- donations from individuals and organizations;
- institutional partnerships; and
- in-kind expertise, infrastructure, staff time, and other support from across the BHL community.
Building a diverse and sustainable funding base reduces reliance on any single institution or source of income and helps safeguard BHL’s long-term future.
Public donations are now a critical part of BHL’s funding. Learn more about how you can support BHL through our Ways to Give page.
With the major transition work complete, BHL is focused on strengthening and developing its new operating model.
Current priorities include:
- building sustainable and diversified funding;
- modernizing BHL’s technical platform and services;
- strengthening governance and organizational capacity;
- developing new institutional, research, and technical partnerships;
- growing and improving BHL’s collections and data;
- making BHL content easier to discover, navigate, analyze, and reuse; and
- ensuring that biodiversity knowledge remains freely available and connected to research, conservation, education, and discovery.
Visit the Future of BHL page for an overview of the transition, major milestones, guiding principles, and BHL’s priorities for the future.
Updates are also shared through the BHL Blog, BHL Newsletter, BHL Community Forum, and social media channels.