This Vast Library of Life Puts Nature Online | The Washington Post

Note: Former MBLWHOI Library Director Cathy Norton was instrumental in creating the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium that digitizes biodiversity literature and makes it freely accessible to the world. A pioneer of open access, Norton was founding vice-chair and later chair and deputy director of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Flowers. Climate change. Animals. Ecosystems. If you’re a nature lover, you probably have burning questions — and niche interests — about many aspects of life on our vast planet.

But you don’t have to go to the ends of the Earth to learn more. With the Biodiversity Heritage Library, you don’t even have to leave your computer.

The massive, open-access digital library offers users hundreds of thousands of books, archival holdings, images and more — about 60 million pages in all.

Best of all, it’s free. Read rest of article here.

Source: This Vast Library of Life Puts Nature Online | The Washington Post

Below: Plate 34, labeled Tanagra Darwini, from "The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle ... during the years 1832-1836 (Part 3: Birds)" by Charles Darwin, one of thousands of books scanned for the Biodiversity Heritage Library by the MBLWHOI Library. Courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library

Plate 3 from The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle ... during the years 1832-1836" by Charles Darwin. Courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library