MUSEUM LIBRARIES AS CHANGE AGENTS IN SCIENCE DATA

LIBER Conference 7 July 2017, Patras, Greece

Jane Smith, Natural History Museum, London

Constance Rinaldo, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative

Zoology, Harvard University;

Martin Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Twitter @udcmrk)

The Context:

Delivering access to biodiversity literature.

Supporting scientists working with colleagues and specimens geographically dispersed.

Expectation and need that literature and data be a click away whether in the laboratory or in the field.

A case study with our three institutions and libraries forming three examples.

Institution 1: Ernst Mayr Library

• Established 1859

• Specialized science library

• Embedded in a museum

• Integrated into an academic library (Harvard)

• Mixed funding: museum and academic program

Institution 2: Natural History Museum, London

NHM Origins, governance and scale

• Public opening in South Kensington in 1881. Foundation collection from Hans Sloan (1660-1753).

• Non-departmental body of UK Government (Dept. of Culture, Media and Sport)

• Governed by 12 NHM Trustees under British Museum Act (1963)

• One of the world’s great public-facing scientific institutions

80M specimens

5M visitors

1,000 staff (300 scientific

staff) 500 volunteers,

NHM London Summary

NHM Strategy to 2020 – aims to challenge the way we think about the natural world; its past present and future

Research Relevance; Access; Distinctiveness; Integration; Training and outreach of collections and science; Partnerships

NHM overview

• NHM Strategy to 2020 designed to reposition the Museum

o Digital - big data and innovation

o National – UK biodiversity, citizen science and capacity building

o International – scientific grand challenges

o London – visitor experience

• Founded in the 19th

Century

• The Natural History Museum Library forms one of a network of 21 specialised research libraries that make up the Smithsonian Libraries

• Funded through Government and endowments

Institution 3: Smithsonian, Natural History Museum

What we all three have in common

C15th C16th C17th C18th C19th C20th C21st

• Extensive

• Open

• Global

• Linked

• Natural history sciences

• Collectors /naturalists

• Exploration

• Regions

• Focus on natural history science

• Biodiversity specifically

• Extensive collections –published and original material

• Complementary collections

• Supporting scientists and other researchers

• Often the same researchers moving between institutions

Differences:

• Home institutions – type, drivers, strategies

• Funding, legal frameworks

• Subject coverage

Biodiversity Heritage Library -Brings us all together

The Biodiversity Heritage Library

(www.biodiversitylibrary.org) is an open access digital

library for biodiversity literature and archives.

The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library

Charles Darwin, et al (1847)

Biodiversity Heritage Library

noun | \tak-suh-nom-ik im-ped-uh-muh nt\

The problem we are jointly solving- the

Taxonomic Impediment

Much of the biodiversity literature, published and

original material, is available in only a few select

libraries in the developed world. Lack of access to

the literature is a major impediment to the efficiency

of scientific research.

Natural history literature and archives contain

information that is critical to studying life on Earth.

SPECIES

DESCRIPTIONS

DISTRIBUTION

RECORDS

HISTORY OF

SCIENTIFIC

DISCOVERY

CLIMATE

RECORDS

INFORMATION

ON EXTINCT

SPECIES

SCIENTIFIC

OBSERVATIONS

ECOSYSTEM

PROFILES

SCIENTIFIC

ILLUSTRATIONS

BHL is a Global Consortium

19MEMBERS

As of July 2017

15AFFILIATES60+ WORLDWIDE PARTNERS

52+MILLION PAGES

TITLES VOLUMES

121,000+ 204,000+

176+MILLION

MILLIONINSTANCES OF TAXONOMIC NAMES

615+IN-COPYRIGHT TITLES LICENSED FOR BHL ©

AGREEMENTS

WITH 260+RIGHTS HOLDERS

*Stats as of June 2017

BHL Content to date

content in BHL

3.9 million+ PAGES

90,000-12,000 DOWNLOADS A MONTH

Use in research, training, public engagement

Benefits to our users in common across our institutions

• Focus on scientists (taxonomists/systematists)• Often working on cross-institutional, cross-funded projects

• Need to access, extract, use data in similar ways

• Critical mass of content for our users

• Extending how we work with out “local” constituencies – using feedback and engagement from our science users

• Wider audiences in other research disciplines and public

Digitization Strategy

• Local strategies reflected in the common strategy for BHL

• Low hanging fruit first – published out-copyright

• Obtaining permissions for in-© material

• Now moving on to special collections and archives

• Collective approach• Common digital collection policy

• Technology approach - shared repository , tools and applications

• Standards of practice – raising the bar

• Making literature available

• Digitization

• Open access

• Data integration

• Linking library and archives to specimens

Open Science

Unlocking the data – connecting the data

Unlocking Data

• Releasing the taxonomic intelligence within our collections

• Taxonomic descriptions

• Exposing hidden/forgotten data, images

• Future developments: full text search, georeferencing

BHL collaborates with and contributes

content to a variety of partners…

Practical questions we are often asked?

• If there is a copy in BHL, why keep the physical copy?The more we digitization the more demand the view the physical version

Unique / rare collections

Relationship to specimen collections and the history of natural history science

Relationship to the history of our institutions (memory collections)

• Why pay membership when BHL is free and we do the work?• Long term sustainability – A repository holding large quantities of

information

• Can we afford adding/developing/maintaining tools as individual institutions?

Impacts of Digitization : Literature and Specimens

• Improved data linkages

• Improved accessibility of digital objects

• Managing changes in Storage/space needs

• Cost/Shared solutions

• Downsides• Collection dispersal

• Less accessibility to physical objects

• Potential Loss of “browsability”

• Potential loss of physical object data

Benefits of collaboration – a few examples

• Resources: Shared solution to digitization to meet our end user needs

• Locally – and in partnership able to consider • Conservation and preservation

• Disaster planning

• Space planning

• Lease vs. buy collections

• Weeding & deduplication of collections

• Sharing knowledge, expertise, bench marking etc.

Why keep the physical objects?

• National collection/only or one of few copies in the world

• Representing history of natural history

• Include annotations

• Specimen relationship

• Provenance dates

• Some things we will keep because of their interest for wider research disciplines or as objects in their own right• Look at covers, advertisements etc.

• Gathering DNA/chemical makeup of paper

• Changes or differences in illustrations

Evaluation- analysis – lessons learned

• BHL = more than the sum of our parts• Without losing sight of the focus of our individual institution’s

strategies, drivers,

• Common standards, raising collective standards

• Resources - sharing the costs

• Common solutions to long term development and sustainability

• Changes in collection development, duplication, weeding, space, collection management

• End user feedback—critical to developing BHL (global collective) and support the individual institutional need

• Regular review and updating of communication approaches and how we collaborate.

• Seeking the mutual benefits - balancing local institutional needs with the wider BHL approaches

Questions?

www.biodiversityheritagelibrary.org

Constance Rinaldo:

crinaldo@oeb.harvard.edu http://library.mcz.harvard.edu

Jane Smith: Jane.Smith@nhm.ac.uk www.nhm.ac.uk/library

Martin Kalfatovic: kalfatovicm@si.edusmithsonianlibraries.si.edu