BHL’s Full Text Search is such a powerful (and sometimes surprising) way to explore BHL’s incredible collections.
Here are a few creative ways to use it:
1. Search for adjectives and opinions
Ever wondered what naturalists actually thought about the things they encountered? Try searching for words like “delicious”, “curious”, “favourite”, “disaster” or “extraordinary”, then narrow your results by author.
For example: What did Alfred Russel Wallace find “delicious” in his travels?
2. Discover hidden contributors
Not everyone appears under their full name in historical texts.
Search for “Mrs Gould” and you’ll uncover references to Elizabeth Gould across John Gould’s publications. One of my favourites: “executed on stone by Mrs. Gould, with that admirable success, which has attended all her works” (The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, 1838).
This is a great way to surface overlooked contributors, especially women whose names weren’t always fully recorded.
3. Follow a phrase across the literature
Try searching for a distinctive phrase and see where it appears.
For example: A search for “savage and malicious” returns multiple results across very different publications, from Grandpapa’s Tales of Animals to*The New England Farmer* to the first description of the thylacine!
4. Combine with filters for deeper exploration
The real magic happens when you:
- search a word or phrase
- then refine your results using filters such as author, date, publication, contributor, subject, language, or material type
This turns simple keyword searching into a powerful research tool, helping you move from broad exploration to very precise results.
Happy searching! Be warned: it’s very easy to fall down a BHL rabbit hole…
Illustration by George Edward Lodge, from “The Rabbit” (1898), contributed to BHL by American Museum of Natural History Library.
Full Text Search opens up BHL in a completely different way, not just for finding known items, but for discovering patterns, voices, and stories across the literature.
I’d love to hear how others are using it. Any favourite searches or surprising finds?