Developer Tools

Names | URLs | Citations

BHL is building APIs to allow individual users and data providers to remix and reuse BHL content. The following APIs are currently available or under development. To suggest an API or enhancement, please use our Feedback.

Scientific Names

BHL uses TaxonFinder, a taxonomic intelligence tool developed by collaborators at uBio.org, to locate and identify scientific names within the text of digitized books. This names-based index is an incredibly valuable tool for organismal research, and is easily incorporated into external web sites through two different methods of access.

1. Bibliography by URL
To easily link into a list of all pages containing a given scientific name, use the following URL:

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/name/Scientific_name

Where Scientific_name is any uninomial, binomial, or trinomial. Replace spaces with the underscore ( _ )character.

Examples:

• http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/name/Orchidaceae (Orchid family)
• http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/name/Carcharodon_carcharias (Great white shark)
• http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/name/Phalacrocorax_carbo_maroccanus (Great Cormorant)

2. BHL Name Services
The BHL Name Services are XML-based web services that can be invoked via SOAP or HTTP GET/POST requests. Responses can be received in one of three formats: XML wrapped in a SOAP envelope, XML, or JSON.

If you want to use SOAP to invoke the service methods, you can navigate to http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/services/name/NameService.asmx to view the available methods. From that page, you can view the WSDL document for the web service, or click on each method to see detailed information about invoking the method and about the data that is returned.

If you are using HTTP to invoke the methods, the services are located at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/services/name/NameService.ashx. Note the difference in the extension on the service URL: ASHX for HTTP vs. ASMX for SOAP.

Full documentation on the BHL Name Services is available at:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgvjvvkz_1x5qbm3

Stable URLs

BHL produces stable URLs for our content and will ensure viability of these URLs. Stable URLs are available for the following areas of content, with examples:

Subject: Insects
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/subject/Insects

Author: Darwin, Charles, (1809 - 1882)
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/93

Title: The Journal of the Linnean Society
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/title/350

Item/Book: The Journal of the Linnean Society, v. 8 1865
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/8361

Page/Article: Bentham, G. (1865). On the Genera Sweetia, Sprengle, and Glycine, Linn., simultaneously published under the name of Leptolobium.The Journal of the Linnean Society, 8: 259-267.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/226820

Citation Linking

Data providers can include links to literature using our stable URLs for scanned pages. The URL is displayed below "Link to this page". For example, to cite the original description of Zea mays:

Citation: Carl Linnaeus' Species Plantarum. 2 : 971. 1753.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/358992

Coming Soon - Data providers will be able to query BHL to determine if a given journal article or book has been digitized. Plans are underway to use OpenURL to facilitate linking.