BHL is used in many different ways, including some wonderfully creative ones.
One example is Art of Fauna by Klemens Strasser (and the just-launched Art of Flora), digital jigsaw puzzle apps built around historical natural history illustrations from BHL.
Using 18th- and 19th-century artwork originally created for scientific publications and now preserved by BHL, these apps offer a playful and visually engaging way to explore biodiversity literature.
Art of Fauna has received multiple awards, including recognition in Apple’s 2025 Design Awards, where it won the Inclusivity category and was a finalist in Social Impact. It also received an App Store Award for Cultural Impact in December 2025.
The app supports wildlife conservation organisations, with close to €20,000 raised to date and over €10,000 already donated to organisations including Naturschutzbund Steiermark, Regenwald der Österreicher, Rettet den Regenwald, and the Coral Reef Alliance.
Projects like these are a great reminder that BHL is not only a resource for research and collection work, but also a source of inspiration for creative reuse, design, education, and public engagement.
If you know of other projects using BHL in interesting ways, whether in research, teaching, art, digital humanities, Wikimedia, data work, or elsewhere, we’d love to hear about them.