suzanne pilsk presentation to sil board 2012

Partnering In Research: The Smithsonian Libraries,

Index Animalium &

Taxonomic Literature, 2nd Ed

Suzanne C. Pilsk Metadata Librarian

Smithsonian Libraries

Smithsonian Institution

African Art

African American History and Culture

Anthropology

American Art

American History

Asian and Middle Eastern Art

Aviation history and Space Flight

Design and Decorative Arts

Environmental Management and Ecology

History of Science and Technology

Latino History and Culture

Materials Research

Modern and Contemporary Art

Museology

Native American History and Culture

Natural History

Postal History

Tropical Biology

Trade Literature

World’s Fair Ephemera

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Support for the Sciences Taxonomic Nomenclature

Identifying and Naming of Species New, Old, Re-name, Misspellings, Synonyms,

Homonyms, Splits, Joins, …. Authorship: Who, When, Former …

Rules: International Code of Botanical Nomenclature International Code of Zoological Nomenclature International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria

Importance of Publication

Who Writes

Publishes

and Distributes

FIRST

WINS

Justification of NH Libraries!

In any well-appointed Natural History Library there should be found every book and every edition of every book dealing in the remotest way with the subjects concerned.

Charles Davies Sherborn, Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922

“Veni, vidi, vici – and now history: Botany’s new rules allow English to replace Latin in Describing Species” Washington Post 19 January 2012

Libraries and Librarians

Tools of the Trade

Index Animalium / Sherborn

Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition

Metadata Fail

Digitization

Will they find it?

If you digitize it …

Search Gone BAD!

Metadata Successes

Compiled between 1890-1933 Covers literature 1758-1850

More than 9,000 pages Published in over 30 volumes

Indexes more than 400,000 names

The Squire

Connecting Index to Sources

Bibliography = Metadata

Sherborn’s Bibliography: Zoological Miscellany (Leach’s). 3 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1814-17.

Library’s Catalog: The zoological miscellany : being descriptions of new, or interesting animals / by William Elford Leach

"362382","SIL34_02_24_0193","6101","splendens Turdus, W. E. Leach, Zool. Miscell. II. 1815, 30.”

ID Image ID Page Name & reference

Database Parsing To Find Pieces and Parts

Index Citation Species Name to Page

Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition

Taxonomic Literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types (second edition)

15 volumes guide to the literature of systematic botany published between 1753 and 1940

Organized by author ~ Citation for the author’s surname

Numbered entries of the author’s publications ~ Suggested short-title & abbreviation of short-title for use in taxonomic publications

TL2 is a standard by which author’s names and titles should be abbreviated

Digitizing The Entire Title: Scope of Work

• Approximately 11, 500 scanned pages • Average of 3,300 characters per page • Approximately 44, 000 author entries • Image files approx. 9 GB in size

★ Linked Open Data – 5 Stars ★

★ Available on the web (whatever format), but with an open licence

★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)

★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)

★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff

★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context

• Shareable

• Extensible

• Re-Usable

• International

FOAF: Friend of a Friend

Linked Open Data Subject Predicate Object

Subject – A “thing” with a unique identifier

Johan Wilhelm Palmstruch

TL2 id <Palmstr>

Predicate – A “verb” with a unique identifier

Illustrated

RDA <Illustrator>

Object – A “thing” with a unique identifier

Svensk Botanik

TL2 id <7247>

Triple Stores

Johan Wilhelm Palmstruch

Illustrated

Svensk Botanik

TL2 BOTid <Palmstr> RDA <Illustrator> TL2 BKid<7247>

TL2 BKid <7247> RDA <Illustrator> TL2 BOTid <Palmstr>

TL2: Linked Open Data

Botanists Pages Triple Stores of Name relationship to Books Name relationship to Standard Abbreviation

Book Pages Triple Stores of Book relationship to Name Book relationship to TL2 Numbering Book relationship to Standard Abbreviation

http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/

SIL

TL-3

Future

Life and Literature Conference 2011

Life and Literature Conference 2011

Life and Literature Conference 2011

Compelling Use Cases for Digitization Including cool and unexpected Once digitized, text is just text Significant amount not discoverable

“So in not fully investigating the product of the digital projects, are we selling scholarship short? What scholarship in the digital age means? And what are the real tools we need to do it?” Elycia Wallis, Museum Victoria

Thanks To Many

• Joel Richard

• Martin Kalfatovic

• Grace Costantino

• Courtney Shaw

• Keri Thompson

• Robin Everly

• Interns too numerous to name

• Volunteers too numerous to name

• Gilbert Borrego

• Carolyn Sheffield

• Bianca Crowley

• Becky Morin

• Mike Lichtenburg

• David Remsen

• Patrick Leary

• Chris Freeland

• Rod Page

Contact information: PilskS@si.edu

Interesting Sources Index Animalium www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/indexanimalium

Taxonomic Literature (3) www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2

Connecting Content

research.calacademy.org/library/fieldnotes

The Field Book Project

www.mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/index.html

Linked Open Data

linkeddata.org/

Life and Literature Conference

http://www.lifeandliterature.org/

Smithsonian Institution

www.si.edu/

Biodiversity Heritage Library

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

Internet Archive

www.archive.org/