Hi - at UNEP-WCMC. Our own historical work was digitised onto the Biodiversity Heritage Library. We don't have a physical library any more.

We're counting down the hours. Please help if you can. 🧪

Day #5 in Tanzania: today I travelled from Zanzibar’s southern tip to its west, where I’ll be departing for Chumbe Island, an IUCN listed nature reserve & #GlobalBiodiversityHotspot known for its ecological innovation & exceptional coral reefs. Meanwhile, here are some dolphin pics from yesterday.

Day #3 in Tanzania: Kizimkazi, a secluded beach on the southern coast of Zanzibar. #HomewardBound #iNaturalist

Day #2 in Tanzania: The beautiful UNESCO & IUCN listed Jozani Forest (the only national park in Zanzibar): monkeys & elephant shrews #HomewardBound @inaturalist.bsky.social

Day #1 in Tanzania in the lead up to the 2025 #HomewardBound Leadership Summit. Zanzibar: ocean, islands, boats, Stone Town, markets, spices, cats & the first observations for our HB #iNaturalist project: www.inaturalist.org/projects/hom...

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has donated to BHL’s Fundraising Campaign so far! 💚 Your generosity will help us build an independent, sustainable future for open biodiversity knowledge. 🌿 📖 🌏 🧪 Every gift helps: 🔗 ancrywkv.donorsupport.co/page/BHLDona... #ILoveBHL #OpenAccess

All ready for my 2am meeting with the BHL global consortium on this #Halloween Eve. We were instructed to dress for the holiday, so I’ll be sporting my glow-in-the-dark owl t-shirt & red-back spider earrings. #BHLib

📣 Calling all biodiversity institutions! Meise Botanic Garden is supporting the continuation of BHL by auditing/cancelling non-Open Access journal subscriptions & diverting all saved funds to BHL. Patricia Mergen encourages other institutions to do the same 🧪 🌱🌎 #LivingData2025 #OpenAccess #ILoveBHL

Ben Scott @nhm-london.bsky.social shares how his team has extracted trait data from species descriptions on BHL. Result? 706,842 trait terms & the largest trait database in the world. BHL = the foundation of our understanding of biodiversity. #LivingData2025 @biodivlibrary.bsky.social

Trait data is crucial to our understand of biodiversity & informing how species respond to climate change. So much of this essential data is in BHL, captured in species descriptions in the literature. Says Ben Scott @nhm-london.bsky.social at #LivingData2025 @biodivlibrary.bsky.social #ILoveBHL 🌱🧪🌿

But, you can use birds as a vehicle to collect/identify “ugly” species. Rudolf Meier shares an example from Singapore, where 1500 lice were collected from 54 roadkill birds, resulting in the discovery of 50 new lice species. #LivingData2025 #EmbraceTheUgly

The solution to our biodiversity knowledge bias? Rudolf Meier shares @mfnberlin.bsky.social’s Biodiversity Knowledge Factory, which uses robotic specimen handling and imaging, and artificial intelligence for data extraction to describe “ugly” species at scale. 🪰 🪱 🪳 🦟 #LivingData2025

Rudolf Meier paraphrases a post from @rdmpage.bsky.social : as ~ 2/3 of the records in GBIF are birds, @gbif.org is primarily a Global Bird Information Facility. To correct this bias, we need to focus on the “ugly” biodiversity. 🪰 🪱 🪳 🦟 @mfnberlin.bsky.social #LivingData2025 x.com/rdmpage/stat...

The wonderful speakers from @tiagolubiana.bsky.social’s #Wikimedia & #BiodiversityData session at #LivingData2025 (we also had the fabulous @siobhanleachman.bsky.social online). 🧪🔗🌎👩🏼‍💻 @rdmpage.bsky.social @svmering.bsky.social @biodivlibrary.bsky.social @wikimediafoundation.org

Most scientists are not great at communicating their science, says Dean Pentcheff #LivingData2025. #ScienceCommunication is effective when we use narratives. Tell your story. Then you’ll get into people’s hearts. #JaneGoodall

Lauren Oakes shares how Adventure Scientists gathers data to address critical environmental challenges, such as amassing the largest and most diverse global microplastic pollution datasets & using #TreeTracking to prevent illegal logging. Find out more: www.adventurescientists.org #LivingData2025 🧪

Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social shouts out the crucial work of BHL’s Persistent Identifier Working Group (Team #RetroPIDs), who’ve retrospectively assigned 50,000+ DOIs to historic journal articles, which have been cited 74,446 times, giving BHL an H-index of 79. #LivingData2025 @crossref.bsky.social

Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social spoke today at #LivingData2025 about journals that disappear from the web. To learn more about his example: the hijacking and fraudulent DOI Assignment of The Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera, see our BHL blogpost: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2022/10/jour...

Britt Andermann talks about the importance of archival materials (field notes, journals, registers, and excursion reports) as critical sources of biodiversity data, and shares a process for extracting this data and making it accessible & discoverable @gbif.org. #LivingData2025 🧪📚

It’s #WombatDay! And I just happen to be wearing my favourite wombat earrings. #DenzandCo denzandco.com #LivingData2025

Wikipedia has 76,413 links to BHL pages. Wikispecies has 71,876. Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social shares which of those pages are the most viewed on each platform. #LivingData2025

Mike points out that as a result of this improvement to the Biodiversity Heritage Library catalogue, he produces an error report that can help improve #Wikidata. This is a great example of how reuse of Wikidata can bring about improvements to Wikidata. #RoundTripping #LivingData2025

Rod Page @rdmpage.bsky.social asks which of BHL’s 63 million pages are the most important. Clearly the most important page on BHL is the first scientific description of the platypus 😉: doi.org/10.5962/p.30... #LivingData2025 #ILoveBHL #RetroPIDs

The transition of BHL from the Smithsonian is an opportunity to rethink the BHL and to explore its relationships with other projects (e.g. Wikis). @rdmpage.bsky.social shares his test bed for exploring new interfaces at #LivingData2025 bhl-light-806b8b6fa073.herokuapp.com

BHL Lead Programmer, Mike Lichtenberg, shares BHL’s process for exchanging persistent identifiers between BHL and Wikidata, and how this enhances discoverability of biodiversity literature, and builds stronger links between BHL and other biodiversity platforms. #LivingData2025 #IloveBHL 🌱 🔗 📖

@svmering.bsky.social shares how @mfnberlin.bsky.social is digitally cataloguing and digitizing its vast natural history collection of approximately 30 million objects and building a #Wikidata knowledge graph connecting taxa, specimens, people, places, publications, and events. #LivingData2025 🧪 🔗

You should only publish in journals that will make the biodiversity data discoverable AND export taxonomic treatments to GBIF (with DOIs) e.g European Journal of Taxonomy & Pensoft. Say Donat Agosti and Laurence Bénichou at #LivingData2025. @ejtaxonomy.bsky.social @pensoft.net #DatosVivos2025 🌱 🧪 📄

Tens of millions of treatments exist as part of ~500 million pages of published biodiversity literature. At #LivingData2025, Donat Agosti @plazi-species.bsky.social and Laurence Bénichou @mnhn.fr are sharing workflows to liberate the data imprisoned in legacy publications. #FAIRData #OpenAccess 📚 🧪

During @nicolekearney.bsky.social presentation she points out that @biodivlibrary.bsky.social relies very much on donations. Support #BHL via the donate button on www.biodiversitylibrary.org #LivingData2025

So @nicolekearney.bsky.social talks about the fragility of infrastructure for and funding of the @biodivlibrary.bsky.social during her presentation at #LivingData2025

People want to learn & engage with #IndigenousDataSovereignty & #RightsBasedGovernance, but they're afraid to make mistakes & need guidance. GBIF’s #IndigenousData Task Force is addressing this. Learn more www.gbif.org/news/1Ke3Gk2... @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social #LivingData2025 @GBIF.org

There is a LOT of data in GBIF (1.9 billion records), but there is currently no way for Indigenous people to identify their data. So GBIF launched an Indigenous Data Task force to strengthen indigenous voices & ensure ethical use of their data. @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social #LivingData2025 @GBIF.org

“Institutions and researchers have a responsibility to disclose Indigenous collections and data to the communities they pertain to.” @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social #LivingData2025 #DatosVivos2025

The #CAREprinciples are having an international movement. Indigenous people want their data to be open! But we need to make sure that data isn’t creating harm: open as possible; closed as necessary. @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social #LivingData2025 #DatosVivos2025

Scholars are recognising the vital importance of human-nature relationships over long timescales. Their knowledge has gone through the ultimate peer review of many generations, rather than today’s peer review process by 2-3 people. @1nativesoilnerd.bsky.social #LivingData2025

“We need to be responsible scientists and make sure our data goes somewhere it can be used. Put your data in @gbif.org and @obis.org!” @achughes.bsky.social #LivingData2025 #DatosVivos2025 #OpenAccess #FAIRData

🐘 There is more funding for elephant conservation than there is for all reptiles combined 🦎 (and the majority of reptile funding is for marine turtles). @achughes.bsky.social #LivingData2025 #DatosVivos2025

“Two thirds of the data we have about the world’s biodiversity is about birds.” @achughes.bsky.social #LivingData2025 #DatosVivos2025 Similar trend for emojis 🦆🦅🐧🐓🦜🪿🦩🐦‍⬛🦢🦃🦉🐥🐔

Only 15.52% of the world’s surface has biodiversity data in 2025. 90% of that data is 2km from a road or major seaway, often in highly disturbed lowland areas says @achughes.bsky.social at #LivingData2025.

1005 people join us today in (person & online) for Day 1 of #LivingData2025 in one of the world’s greatest biodiversity hotspots. Globally, Colombia has the highest number of species of: 🌱 Orchids: ~ 4,200 🦋 Butterflies: ~ 3,642 🦜 Birds: ~ 1,900

📢 It's day #1 of #LivingData2025! Don't miss our Communication Director @nicolekearney.bsky.social's talk today (11:30). She'll be providing a crucial update about BHL's Transition from the #Smithsonian to a sustainable & autonomous global consortium: www.livingdata2025.com/program.html... 🌱 📖 🌏

A reminder to all #LivingData2025 participants (in-person & virtual) to contribute to the #iNaturalist Project for the conference. 🇨🇴 Colombia: www.inaturalist.org/projects/liv... 🌎 World: www.inaturalist.org/projects/liv... @inaturalist.bsky.social @tdwg.org @gbif.org @obis.org @geobon.org

I'm excited to be speaking at #LivingData2025 about the future of BHL. I'll be sharing a critical update on our transition toward a sustainable, global & community-governed future. 🧪 📖 🌱 🗓️ Info: www.livingdata2025.com/program.html... 🌎 #BHLTransition news: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/tag/transition

BHL has retrospectively assigned DOIs to 50,000+ historic journal articles These articles, which include the first scientific description of the Platypus (1799), are now part of the great linked network of scholarly research: doi.org/10.5962/p.30... #ILoveBHL #RetroPIDs 🧪 @crossref.bsky.social

Did you know that BHL has #FullTextSearch? You can search for scientific names, places, etc, but you can also find all the things that "Alfred Russell Wallace" found "delicious" in his travels (search for "delicious" and then narrow search results by author). #ILoveBHL www.biodiversitylibrary.org 🧪

No, you cant. The Biodiversity Heritage Library is like nothing else in the history of the world.

The BHL online collection just hit 200,000 titles! A title could be a single rare book or an entire 200-year journal run, so 200,000 titles is huge (63+ million pages!). Check out BHL's MAMMOTH collection here: www.biodiversitylibrary.org 📖 🧪 🦣 #OpenAccess #OpenScience #ILoveBHL

I've been managing BHL's #Bluesky account for 4 months now. It's an honour to share such beautiful & significant content, particularly at this critical time. BHL's future is uncertain, but hopeful. Follow along @biodivlibrary.bsky.social & on the #BHLblog: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/tag/transition

The talk is ready, the slides are loaded, and tomorrow I step onto the #IMAXMelbourne stage! I’ll be sharing stories of platypuses, historic #SciArt, career planks (and rescues) & the extraordinary women who’ve shaped my path: imaxmelbourne.com.au/movie/sereng... #HomewardBound #WomeninSTEMM 🧪 🌍