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Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library: Basic Search

Learn how to search the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Searching in the BHL requires access to the BHL's website. Fortunately, the BHL is an open-access resource, and so searching and reading materials is completely free. You can access the BHL's main search page here. An important note: while materials found in the BHL are contributed by a consortium of library's from their own collections, most items found in the BHL will not be listed as such through a typical library catalog. (For instance, searching for a title held in the BHL in UIUC's Primo Catalog will not turn up a link to that work, it must be searched independently through the BHL). 

Full-Text Search

Full-text is the default search option in the BHL. 

The full-text search searches a term across item metadata and the full character recognized text of the collection. 

Search results can be narrowed by item and material type, author, publication date, subject, or language.

BHL's basic search also supports searching with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), exact phrases ("microbiomes"), DOI, and truncation (*). Once a search is conducted, you can narrow your results by type, material, author, publication date, subject, and language. For more information on how to use BHL's basic search, click here. 

Item View

To view an item, simply click the title of the desired work. 

Below is an example of an item view in BHL. Item view allows you to interact with the item, and its notable features are page/table of contents index, inside item searching, scientific name index, links to Flickr images, article title, journal title, journal series view, and content download.

Catalog Search

Catalog search is another search option in the BHL.

The catalog search only searches across item metadata.

Search results can be narrowed by item and material type, author, publication date, subject, or language.

BHL's basic search also supports searching with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), exact phrases ("microbiomes"), DOI, and truncation (*). Once a search is conducted, you can narrow your results by type, material, author, publication date, subject, and language. For more information on how to use BHL's basic search, click here. 

Metadata View

To view the metadata for an item, simply click the "view metadata" button next to the record on the search results page.

Included in the item metadata is information on the title, author(s), item type, date of publication, original publication source, volume and page number, contributor, publisher, identification number, copyright status, copyright statement, and copyright license URL. You can also select to view or cite the item from the metadata page.