GLAM/Newsletter/April 2026/Contents/Biodiversity Heritage Library report
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Update on the BHL Annual Meeting 27 April - 1 May & BHL Day
BHL Annual Meeting 2026
Ambrosia10 attended the BHL Annual Meeting 2026 as the chair of the BHL-Wiki working group. This meeting had the aim of discussing ways forward for BHL after the transition away from the Smithsonian as the previous host of the digital library and the transition team are ending their contracts at the end of June.
A presentation was given by David Iggulden, the Chair of the BHL executive team, summarising the state of BHL and BHL's 20th year anniversary. He also outlined the achievements of the past year since the last BHL Annual Meeting in Berlin. This included the successful transition away from the Smithsonian and the obtaining of a new fiscal sponsor CLIR, a new home for BHL’s technical infrastructure at the Field Museum and the commencement of a successful fund raising campaign.
He went on to list the future challenges for BHL to secure the digital library's future. This included securing funding beyond 2027, technical modernisation, maintaining institutional engagement and ensuring technical capacity is maintained and hopefully improved.
Colleen Funkhouser, the managing director of BHL, then presented giving more detail on the financial challenges required to be overcome in order to sustain BHL. She led a discussion on the drafting of the 2027-2030 strategic plan for BHL and the strategic goals for BHL.
Further discussions at the annual meeting focused on the funding challenge to obtain financial stability for BHL, the challenges of envisioning a new website/platform for BHL as well as ideas for new and improved infrastructure, and encouraging deeper and broader engagement with both institutions and the general public.
Unfortunately the current capacity of the administrative staff of BHL is not yet at a level that empowers BHL to actively engage with the BHL-Wiki working group. As a result, upon her return from London, Ambrosia10 is now planning to atleast invigorate the Wiki side of the BHL-Wiki working group by reestablishing regular meetings. Given her Wikimedian in Residence commitments she is proposing that these meetings recommence in either late June or early July. Previous participants of the BHL-Wiki working can expect Ambrosia10 to contact them with a time and date for the proposed next meeting in the near future.
BHL Day 2026
Siobhan Leachman (Ambrosia10) with Sabine von Mering (S.v.Mering) jointly presented at the BHL Day 2026, a public symposium of presentations held at the Natural History Museum, London about BHL related research and projects.
The presentation given was a summary of two papers published by the research group to which Ambrosia10 and S.v.Mering contributed. The presentation slides and script can be found at this link.
The two papers this presentation summarised were:
- von Mering S, Gardiner LM, Knapp S, Lindon H, Leachman S, Ulloa Ulloa C, Vincent S, Vorontsova MS (2023) Creating a multi-linked dynamic dataset: a case study of plant genera named for women. Biodiversity Data Journal 11: e114408. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e114408 and
- von Mering, S., Knapp, S., Leachman, S., Lindon, H. L., Gu, Q., Vincent, S., & Ulloa Ulloa, C. (2025). The women honoured in flowering plant genera: From myth to reality. Plants, People, Planet, 7(6), 1845–1857. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.70050
- From the team
- Albania report
- Argentina report
- Asia report
- Australia report
- Brazil report
- Colombia report
- Italy report
- New Zealand report
- Nigeria report
- North Macedonia report
- Poland report
- Serbia report
- Switzerland report
- UK report
- USA report
- Biodiversity Heritage Library report
- Memory of the World report
- Calendar