SPNHC 2022 – About BHL

The 2022 Annual Meeting of the Biodiversity Heritage Library will be held in conjunction with the meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA).

The theme of SPNHC 2022 will be “Through the door and through the web: releasing the power of natural history collections onsite and online.”

For complete meeting details and registration, visit www.spnhc2022.com.

Dates: 5 – 10 June 2022

Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

Presented by the National Museums of Scotland and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

BHL Symposia:

BHL is coordinating two symposia as part of the conference on Tuesday 7 June. The detailed conference program is available online at https://spnhc2022.com/programme-2/. Abstracts for each talk are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6573863.

Liberating Natural History Collections Data in Biodiversity Literature
Chairs: Connie Rinaldo and Martin Kalfatovic
Tuesday 7 June
9:30 am – 11:00 am BST

- Nothing in (taxonomic) publishing makes sense except in the light of treatments
  Presenter: Donat Agosti
- All the cool stuff a taxonomic journal can (should?) showcase through semantic enhancement
  Presenter: Laurence Benichou
- Collection and specimen data life cycle completed: The case of Pensoft’s journals and OpenBiodiv Knowledge Graph
  Presenter: Lyubomir Penev
- A new romance between taxonomic literature and specimen data? News from Paris
  Presenter: Gildas Illien
- Using specimen citations to show the impact of natural history collections: metrics, machine learning, and manual annotation
  Presenter: Andrea Thomer
- Presenting botanical type citation data from the International Plant Names Index as material citations
  Presenter: Nicky Nicolson

Reflections on the Biodiversity Heritage Library: Value in Collections and Collaboration
Chair: David Iggulden
Tuesday 7 June
11:30 am – 1:00pm BST

- (un)Natural Selection: Reflections on Collaborative Digitization Prioritization across Repositories of Natural History Texts
  Presenter: Jacqueline Chapman
- The Biodiversity Heritage Library as a platform for connecting natural history materials
  Presenters: Diane Rielinger & Joseph deVeer
- Better publications for better research
  Presenter: Elisa Herrmann
- Project #RetroPIDs: BHL’s mission to unlock the world’s biodiversity literature
  Presenter: Nicole Kearney

Empowering Global Research

BHL supports research across the globe and in a variety of disciplines. Explore more BHL user testimonials.

Having access to this literature through BHL is a treasure. Being able to show the students the original publications...speaks volumes.

Dr. Tracey Hunter-Doniger

College of Charleston

BHL is a wonderful resource. I use a lot of old and obscure resources in my line of work, and BHL makes getting access to these sources a lot easier.

Dr. Paul D. Brinkman

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

As a free, mobile archive for natural history literature, BHL is ideal for 21st century research, which can happen on the field, in a museum, or at a coffee shop, as long as there’s internet connectivity.

Dr. Nicholas Pyenson

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an amazing resource for visual artists! Any artist interested in learning about natural history and science would consider these rare resources invaluable.

Emily Williams, MFA

Troy University

BHL is doing a wonderful service for researchers like me, who work with limited resources in developing countries like India. BHL has had a big, positive impact on my research.

Dr. Varad B. Giri

National Centre for Biological Sciences

BHL is an incredible resource. It provides access to material that is otherwise hard to get and enables me to undertake detailed searches of these sources.

Dr. Karen Sayer

Leeds Trinity University