150,000 Botanical and Animal Illustrations Available for Free Download from Biodiversity Heritage Library

From Natural, general and specific history of living acetabuiferous cephalopods, and fossils

Billed as the world’s largest open access digital archive dedicated to life on Earth, the Biodiversity Heritage Library is comprised of animal sketches, historical diagrams, botanical studies, and various scientific research collected from hundreds of thousands of journals and libraries around the globe. In an effort to share information and promote collaboration to combat the ongoing climate crisis, the site boasts a collection of more than 55 million pages of literature, some of which dates back to the 15th century. At least 150,000 illustrations are available for free download in high-resolution files.

Among the collections is a digital copy of Joseph Wolf’s The Zoological Sketches, two volumes containing about 100 lithographs depicting wild animals housed in London’s Regent’s Park. Wolf originally sketched and painted the vignettes in the mid-19th century. Other diverse works range from a watercolor project detailing flowers indigenous to the Hawaiian islands, to a guide for do-it-yourself taxidermy replete with illustrated instructions published in 1833.

The library also offers a variety of tools, including search features to find species by taxonomy and another option to monitor online conversations related to books and articles in the archive. Consistently adding collections to the public domain, the organization currently is working on a project to promote awareness of the field notes available from the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the Smithsonian Libraries, and the National Museum of Natural History.

For those who don’t want to dig through pages of archives, head to Flickr and Instagram for a more streamlined visual experience. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

From Brasilische Pilzblumen

From Complete natural history of forest crops in Germany

From The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands

From Horticultural Belgium

From Zoological sketches

From Horticultural Belgium

From Selected articulate animals

From Natural history of Victoria

From Selected articulate animals

From The naturalist’s miscellany, or Coloured figures of natural objects

From The naturalist’s miscellany, or Coloured figures of natural objects

 

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