The Biodiversity Heritage Library: sharing biodiversity literature with the world

Ten major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries, and research institutions in the United Kingdom and the United States joined in 2005 to develop a strategy and operational plan to digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global "biodiversity commons." Headquartered at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) has been embraced as one of the four cornerstones of the Encyclopedia of Life, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on earth. Major funding for the project has come from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Richard Lounsbury Foundation. This paper will provide an overview of the BHL and its potential impact on biodiversity research, describe the BHL portal and its innovative search services, and provide a case study of the process from one of the members: the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University.