Digital Public Library of America » Blog Archive » Biodiversity Heritage Library Announces Partnership with Digital Public Library of America

April 9, 2013

Cambridge, MA – The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to announce that it will serve as a digital content hub within the Digital Public Library of America. The DPLA pilot project, which combines and centralizes links to the collections of participating cultural institutions, launches on April 18 in Boston.

As a result of BHL’s participation as a digital content hub, links to over 111,000 BHL volumes will be available within the DPLA portal. Through the DPLA, the Biodiversity Heritage Library will collaborate with renowned libraries, universities, archives and museums to reach a wide national audience.

“The Biodiversity Heritage Library is excited to be part of the Digital Public Library of America and to provide an important body of literature that will support the important mission of providing openly available scientific publications,” said Martin Kalfatovic, BHL Program Director.

Kalfatovic served, along with founding BHL Technical Director Chris Freeland, as first co-chairs of the DPLA’s Technical Aspects Workstream.

“We are thrilled to have the Biodiversity Heritage Library as a Content Hub,” said Emily Gore, DPLA Director for Content.  “The BHL shares the DPLA’s commitment to open access and global data sharing, and brings rich biodiversity collections from a number of natural history and botanical libraries to the DPLA.”

About the Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used. More information is online at http://dp.la. To find out more about the DPLA launch, April 18-19 in Boston, visit http://dp.la/get-involved/events/launch/.

About the Biodiversity Heritage Library

BHL partners comprise 15 natural history libraries in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. They are committed to working together to digitize the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections and making that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” The BHL Secretariat is hosted by Smithsonian Libraries. The Technical Director and portal development team are hosted by Missouri Botanical Garden. Affiliated BHL projects have been established in Europe, China, Australia, and Brazil. To further explore the new BHL, visit http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/.

Image: Flore des serres et des jardins de l’Europe, A Gand chez Louis van Houtte, eÌditeur, 1845-1880. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library on Flickr; used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license.