The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a worldwide consortium of libraries and archives from natural history museums and botanical gardens. The members meet annually for the BHL Annual Meeting and invite experts and interested parties to a symposium. The theme of this year's symposium is Bridging Data and Nature: Connecting Information, Technology and Biodiversity and will take place on 9 and 10 April 2025 at the Museum für Naturkunde.
BHL is a role model for the importance of global collaboration by making biodiversity literature accessible to the world as part of the biodiversity community. Work is ongoing to extract the data from the digitised literature and make it even more available to the scientific community. This symposium aims to bridge the gap between data and nature by connecting information, technology and biodiversity research. The event serves as an exchange platform for experts, users and interested parties to tackle common challenges and strengthen connections. The main topics are: Literature as a data source for biodiversity, data integration, (re)use of biodiversity data and public participation as well as teaching and building competences in handling biodiversity data.
The symposium will take place on 9 and 10 April. The lectures will be held on site in the afternoon of 9 April and streamed live, so that virtual participation is also possible. On the morning of 10 April, participants will be able to discuss topics from the previous day's presentations and from the entire BHL consortium in workshops. Due to the majority of international participants, the event will be held in English. More information about the symposium and the registration link can be found here.
The aim of the BHL consortium is to publish all biodiversity knowledge held in libraries and archives digitally and without access restrictions. The BHL is thus the largest open access library on biodiversity literature with over 62.5 million pages from almost 314,800 volumes or 196,900 titles. The Museum für Naturkunde is the only institution in the German-speaking world to have been a full member of the consortium since October 2018.
The library at the Museum für Naturkunde is a specialised scientific library that is primarily available to Museum staff, but also to the global scientific community and interested members of the public. It was founded at the same time as the Museum and preserves a large collection of research literature from the 15th century to the present day. Its holdings are closely linked to the Museum's research topics, with a historical focus on palaeontology, zoology and mineralogy. In recent years, titles from the fields of the history of science and the Anthropocene have also been added. The holdings of the library collection have been successively scanned and published in the BHL since the end of 2020. The digital copies are being created as part of the collection development project as part of the Museum's plan for the future.
You can find more information about the library on the website.