Biodiversity Literature

Biodiversity Heritage Library
Eight of the world's major natural history institutions and botanical libraries - including the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the National Museum of Natural History - are working together to digitize the published literature on biodiversity that they jointly hold and make it freely accessible on the Internet.

The project, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, will establish a central resource of biodiversity publications drawn from their combined collections - some 2 million volumes collected during 200 years. Other participants include the Royal Botanic Gardens, England; the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology and Harvard University Botany Libraries; the Natural History Museum, London; and the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
Anyone in the world with an Internet connection and an interest in the Earth's living species can now access worldwide networks of biodiversity data form his or her desktop, thanks to the Global Diversity Information Facility (GBIF). The world's biodiversity encompasses all living species of plants, animals and organisms on the planet Earth, as well as their genetic variants and the ecosystems in which they live.

For more information about GBIF, read "Earth's Biodiversity Now on Your Desktop" published by the National Science Foundation.