Nicole Kearney
Manager, Biodiversity Heritage Library Australia
Living in Brunswick East, Australia
Nicole is a zoologist, a science communicator and a mum. Nicole manages the Australian branch of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest online repository of biodiversity literature and archival material. She is passionate about making the world’s biodiversity knowledge freely accessible, discoverable and interlinked online.
As well as being the Australian representative for the global BHL project, she is one of 20 representatives worldwide who govern the global BHL Consortium. Since taking on this role in 2014, Nicole has grown BHL Australia from four contributing organisations to more than 50, bringing in Australia’s museums, herbaria, universities, state libraries, government agencies and royal societies.
Nicole is a Research Associate of the CSIRO and, in 2018, was one of 100 leaders worldwide invited to join a Global Alliance for Biodiversity Knowledge. She is regularly invited to speak at national and international conferences, both within and outside her field.
In 2020, she established a global Persistent Identifier Working Group (Team #RetroPIDs) to bring the historic literature – the foundation of our understanding of biodiversity – into the modern linked network of scholarly research, so that we can build on that knowledge today.
Nicole loves exploring and learning, both in the physical world (bushwalking, hiking, travelling) and through the world of books (reading, listening, researching).
