Public lecture at the National Library (Singapore) held as part of the 2017 BHL Annual Meeting. Understanding life on our planet is now more important than ever. The millions of species that we share our Earth with, how they live, their relationships to other species and the environment, and how our mutual life on our planet is more critical than ever. The scientific data collected for hundreds of years is now freely available from Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Singapore is a key partner in this global endeavor anchoring the BHL's data from Southeast Asia. Martin R. Kalfatovic and Grace Constantino from the Biodiversity Heritage Library will discuss the importance of over 300 years of scientific publications about our fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth and how the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a free, global, and open collection of the most important research about life on earth, provides citizens of the world with access to the most authoritative literature available.