Press releases

 

Apr 16 2018
13:32

University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg is the first German library in the consortium

Goethe University's Library joins the Biodiversity Heritage Library

FRANKFURT. The University Library Johann Christian Senckenberg (UB JCS) in Frankfurt am Main just joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) as an official Affiliate. BHL is an online library sustained by nearly 40 natural history libraries and museums from around the world. UB JCS is the first German library to join the consortium.

The University Library will enhance BHL’s corpus of biodiversity literature by contributing content from its rich Biology Collection. By enabling free access to Central European biodiversity literature, the Library will significantly enhance discoverability of knowledge contained in a segment of literature which is not yet satisfactorily represented online.

The University Library’s Biology Collection comprises excellent holdings of historic and modern biodiversity literature, representing some 400,000 volumes on the entire spectrum of biological science. UB JCS has a long history of collection digitization and provides access to a large corpus of digitized literature through its "Digitale Sammlungen" portal, including a notable collection of German botanical journals from 1753-1914. In 2017, the Specialised Information Service Biodiversity Research project (BIOfid; co-funded by the German Research Council DFG) was established to enhance access to the Biology Collection. Through continued digitization of literature and the development of new services including text mining tools to mobilize data within the literature, the project aims to build a bridge between historical holdings and modern biodiversity research. The BIOfid project is conducted by the Library in collaboration with the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and the Text Technology Lab of the Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main.

For further information:

Information: Dr. Gerwin Kasperek, Subject Librarian for Biology and Head of BIOfid Project, University Library J. C. Senckenberg, Bockenheimer Landstraße 134-138, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Tel: +49 (69) 798 39365, E-Mail: biofid@ub.uni-frankfurt.de