BHL ~ Biodiversity Heritage Library

World’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity.

Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. Operating as an international library consortium, BHL provides free access to millions of pages, representing over 500 years of scientific research, alongside services like data exports, APIs, and taxonomic intelligence tools to facilitate discovery and reuse of data and collections.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library offers a range of free tools and services to support the use of their collections and data:

• Content Download Services: Content in BHL can be freely downloaded in a variety of formats. 
• Scientific Name Tools: BHL uses taxonomic intelligence tools to locate, verify, and record scientific names in digitized materials. 
• Reference Management Tools: bibliographic citations can be downloaded from BHL in MODS, BibTeX or RIS formats.
• DOIs and Stable URLs: BHL produces stable URLs for all content and assigns DOIs (digital object identifiers) to select content.
• Developer and Data Tools: BHL provides data exports and APIs to allow individual users and data providers to download, remix and reuse BHL content. 
• Altmetric: BHL uses Altmetric to track online conversations (i.e. social media, news outlets, policy documents, etc.) that include links to BHL books and articles. 

Type: virtual infrastructure

Creation date: 2005

Access & costs: Free online access.

Website: www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Contacts:

• Email: feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org
• Social media: @BioDivLibrary