the biodiversity heritage library (bhl) project
DESCRIPTION
Presentation by Graham Higley, Natural History Museum. Given at the London Museum, Libraries and Archives Group conference April 2007.TRANSCRIPT
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Project
Graham Higley
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
What is BHL trying to do?
Digitize the core published literature on biodiversity and make available for open access on the Web
Work with the global taxonomic community, rights holders and other interested parties to ensure that the functionality of the BHL meets their needs
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Beginnings… Library and Laboratory: the Marriage of Research,
Data and Taxonomic Literature, London, February 2005 The librarians present agreed that scanning the whole
biodiversity literature was now a possibility Open access 10c per page Tractable domain The ‘Environment’
Library Directors Meeting, Washington, May 2005 Libraries represented at the London meeting gathered in
Washington to lay out the ground work for the Biodiversity Heritage Library
Many meeting since then…… More partners….
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Taxonomic Literature
Over 250 years of the systematic description of life
Systema naturae (10th ed. 1758) by Carl von Linné
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Taxonomic Literature
The cited half-life of publications in taxonomy is longer than in any other scientific discipline
The decay rate is longer than in any scientific discipline
- Macro-economic case for open access, Tom Moritz
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Taxonomic Literature
The essential requirements for accessing and utilising this global information are that:
There is access to information held in national/regional/global collections
Electronic data is efficiently captured and provided in useable form
Existing information held in literature and by current experts is made available electronically
Stability of scientific names of organisms, used to access this information, is promoted
- Darwin Declaration, 1998
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Scale of the problem
Core biodiversity literature pre-1923
400,000 volumes (80 million pages)
All biology literature pre-1923 600-750,000 volumes (120-150
million pages) All biology literature
1.4-1.6 million volumes (280-320 million pages)
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
What is BHL trying to do?
Digitize the core published literature on biodiversity and make available for open access on the Web
Work with the global taxonomic community, rights holders and other interested parties to ensure that the functionality of the BHL meets their needs
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
BHL Partners
American Museum of Natural History Field Museum Harvard University, Botany Libraries Harvard University, Ernst Meyer
Library of Comparative Zoology Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution Missouri Botanical Garden Natural History Museum New York Botanical Garden Royal Botanic Garden, Kew Smithsonian Institution
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Benefits of BHL
Taxonomists will have access to biodiversity literature – globally
This will fundamentally change the way they work Will provide the developing world with access to the
historical literature They have the biodiversity, but not the libraries
Scientists working in many biological domains – and other areas like meteorology, geology, farming, ecology, etc – will get access
Currently poor integration across biological sciences Advance objectives of the Convention on Biological
Diversity (GBIF, ABS, GTI, etc)
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Components
Store all bibliographic metadata from the member libraries, with commitments
Create volume, part, piece metadata
Ingest page level metadata at scanning level
Creation of page level Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) for linking to other taxonomic services
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Components
Scan pages!
OCR the pages (and repeat regularly)
Taxonomic Intelligence – name management and linking to other name servers
Serve from 4 global locations
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Rights Open Access: all content
can be reused, repurposed, reformatted, sliced, diced, scraped
Creative Commons licenses Opt-in Copyright Model: The
BHL will actively work with professional societies, associations and commercial publishers to integrate their publications into the BHL
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Internet Archive ‘Scribe’
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Scribe Productivity
Single Scribe Machine Human operated 30 volumes per person per
week~ 7,500 pages
18 Scribes running 2 shifts
36,000 volumes per annum
~ 12,500,000 pages
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
Encyclopedia of Life
Major project to create a single Web page for each species (1.8 million!)
EOL needs the literature underpinning in the BHL project
BHL now integrated into EOL $25M of funding in place Launch on 9th May BHL represented on EOL Board
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
BHL Costs and Income
Total cost about $20-30M May be reduced by partners, in-
kind contributions, etc.
Available now about $12.5M Mainly from EOL and EOL
founding partners
Balance from: Private foundations EU Governments
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
What next? Europe, the World…
BHL is US/UK focused.
The NHM plans to engage European partners – through projects such as EDIT and SYNTHESYS – in a similar attempt to capture the non-English language publications
Discussions have already taken place with the Chinese Academy of Sciences
G8 Environment Ministers identified need for ‘Global Species Information System’ – first EU meeting to address response
All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007
Graham HigleyNatural History Museum
www.biodiversitylibrary.org