the biodiversity heritage library: growing from botanical origins

Martin R. Kalfatovic :: Smithsonian Libraries :: Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries :: 12 May 2009

The Biodiversity Heritage LibraryGrowing from Botanical Origins

Martin R. KalfatovicSmithsonian Institution Libraries


• 2003. Telluride. Encyclopedia of Life meeting

• February 2005. London. Library and Laboratory: the Marriage of Research, Data and Taxonomic Literature

• May 2005. Washington. Ground work for the Biodiversity Heritage Library

• June 2006. Washington. Organizational and Technical meeting

• August 2006. New York Botanical Garden. BHL Director’s Meeting.

• October 2006. St. Louis/San Francisco. Technical meetings

• February 2007. Museum of Comparative Zoology. Organizational meeting

• May 2007. Encyclopedia of Life and BHL Portal Launch. Washington DC.


American Museum of Natural History (New York)

Field Museum (Chicago)

Natural History Museum (London)

Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington)

Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis)

New York Botanical Garden (New York)

Royal Botanic Garden, Kew

Botany Libraries, Harvard University

Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


Scanning PartnerInternet Archive

ContributorUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

BHL – EuropeTo be officially launched in May 2009 Discussions underway with China

Additional categories of membership under consideration


Initial grant from the MacArthur and Sloan Foundations (as part of the Encyclopedia of Life grant)

Additional support from parent institutions

Supplemental grants in place for specific development (e.g. Moore Foundation for Fedora)

Additional grants being actively pursued by BHL and individual members


Botanical Members

How much is there:

Core literature pre-1923: 100 million pages (?)

All pre-1923: 120-150 million pages

All literature: 280-320 million pages


More statistics:1.3 million catalogue records 73% are monographs (remainder are serials at title-level) 63% is English language materialThe next most popular language (9%) is GermanAbout 30% of material was published before 1923


Marine Biological Laboratory/WHOI

– Marine monographs

– General Science

Museum of Comparative Zoology

– MCZ publications

– Herpetology monographs and serials

– Ichthyology monographs and serials

Rough Selection


University of Illinois

– Fieldiana

– Natural history of Illinois

American Museum of Natural History

– AMNH publications

– Ornithology

Natural History Museum

– NHM publications

– Major natural history general serials

Rough Selection


Botany Collections

Missouri Botanical Garden,

New York Botanical Garden,

Harvard Botany Libraries, and

Royal Botanic Garden, Kew

– will cooperatively develop a methodology for botanical publications and botanical collections from other BHL members will fill in gaps

Rough Selection


Smithsonian Institution Libraries

– Smithsonian publications

– Entomology collection

– Marine mammals

– Fishes

– Selected special collections materials

Rough Selection


Collections Coordinator on board in February 2009.

Bianca Lipscomb, based at the Smithsonian, will coordinate material selection across the BHL and contributing partners

Rough Selection


How to make THIS into 0’s and 1’s


Selection Tools:

Combined Serial list for selection of title to scan to avoid duplication of effort

Monographic “de-duping” algorithm

OCLC Collection Analysis


Mass Scanning Workflow• Bid Lists• Serials Management• Pick Lists• Packing Lists• Monographic Management• Local data flow• WonderFetchtm• Return of data• Return of material• Billing


1. Select Book ~Pull from Shelf

2. Review Physically and Metadata

3. Establish viability and create Wonderfetchtm

4. Send to IA scanning center

5. Book is scanned & QA

6. Page images loaded

7. Derivatives created

8. Book returned to library

9. Files harvested from IA portal to BHL

10. Taxonomic Intelligence Added

11. Available through BHL


BHL Scanning


Internet Archive• 501(c)(3) organization• Dedicated to “Universal

Access to Human Knowledge”

• Founder of the Open Content Alliance

• Provides:– Mass scanning– Archival storage of files– Image processing– Technology

development


Single Scribe MachineCustom built by the Internet ArchiveHuman operated3,500 page per shift per day


Northeast Regional Scanning Center

– 10 Scribe machines

– MBL/WHOI

– Harvard

Jersey City Facility


– AMNH

– NYBG


University of Illinois


Natural History Museum, London

– 1 Scribe machine

Missouri Botanical Garden

– Non-Scribe operation


Washington, DC

– 1 Scribe machine at Smithsonian Libraries

– 10 Scribe facility at Library of Congress (FedScan - operational May 2008)


What about other scanning?

• Missouri Botanical Garden Library continuing in-house scanning process

• Other BHL members also have non-Internet Archive scanning operations

• Ingest of other interested libraries


The BHL Portal!



…Names…Rectification of Names (Cheng Ming)What is necessary is to rectify names … If

names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

The Analects of ConfuciusBook 13, verse 3 (Legge translation, 1980)


Since we would be covering more than botany, the obvious choice was:

ZoBo.org


BoZo.org

Or we could give plants precedence:


Maybe TWO portals were needed:

Botanicus.org

Faunicaus.org


Extinctionary.org


Or inspired by the All Species Foundation or Species 2000:

Omnibiosis.org

Vitalis.org

Allogy.org


• BioSpeciesBrary.org• FloraunaBrary.org• BioBrary.org• LifeBrary.org• BioLitBrary.org

Maybe we need to include the “L” word in some way:

Gaspar SchottMechanica hydraulico-pneumatica, 1657


Or maybe something more “metadata-y”

• QHQKQL.org• Z672.org• Z265.org• UDC574.org

Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de BuffonHistoire naturelle : générale et particulière (Oiseaux), 1799-1808

Histoire naturelle générale et particulière…vol. 14. (1766)


Or more of a 18th century library

LibraryofNaturalCuriosities.org

Levinus VincentElenchus tabularum, pinacothecarum, atque nonnullorum cimeliorum . . ., 1719


But in German …

WunderkammerBibliothekKatalogDerLebendenSachen.org

Levinus VincentElenchus tabularum, pinacothecarum, atque nonnullorum cimeliorum . . ., 1719


Or perhaps just stay enigmatic …

42.museum

Antonín FričFauna der Gaskohle und der Kalksteine…1893-


BiodiversityLibrary.org

Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

Our reptiles and batrachians; … indigenous to Great Britain, 1893

The BHL Portal is not an OPAC!


Plant Names

Specimens

Plant Names

Plant NamesSpecimensDescriptions

Plant Names

Plant Names

Citations


Metadata – failure to serve


02761nam 2200469 4500001000700000005001700007008004100024010002300065019001300088035001400101035002300115040006100138049002700199050001500226100004200241245019300283260008300476300001700559504033500576505015400911590010901065590009601174650002601270945002101296945007301317945003101390945004801421945004801469945004701517945007901564945004401643945004601687945004801733945007601781945004401857945005101901945005101952945007102003945009002074945009602164945003102260‑459797‑20050131154400.0‑731129m19021933enk b 000 0 lat c‑ aagr03000069 //r582‑ a14018362‑ aABY6485LB‑ a(OCoLC)ocm00751549‑ aU.S. Dept. of Agr. Libr. cRIU dOCL dCHS dSER dSMI dWaOLN‑ aSMI$ aSMIM aSMIE aSMIB‑00 aQL354 b.S5‑1 aOscar Mayer & Co.‑10 aPronto pup: bhot dogs hamburgers/ ca Oscar Mayer and Company.‑ aNew Orleans, La. : bBourbon Street Foods, c2000.

Metadata: Real MARC – Still failure to serve


- Specimen- Plate or other visual image- Taxonomic description


BHL Portal Demo


BHL 2.0• BHL Blog

http://biodiversitylibrary.blogspot.com

• Twitterwww.twitter.com/biodivlibrary

• Flickrwww.flickr.com/groups/bhl

• Twibewww.twibes.com/groups/BioDivLibrary


http://biodiversitylibrary.blogspot.com/

http://www.twitter.com/biodivlibrary

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bhl

http://www.twibes.com/groups/BioDivLibrary

BHL 2.0

• Coming soon

– SecondLife

– LibraryThing

– OpenLibrary

– ?????????


TheEncyclopedia of Life

Serine Molecule


Built from a variety of new and existing sources

Views available for varying levels of expertise from novice to expert

Legacy literature a key component of the EOL species pages

Encyclopedia of Life Species Pages



Midrange estimate: 25% of 5 million species = 1.3 million species, or roughly 1 every 20 minutes

Low estimate: 15% of 4 million species = 0.6 million species, or roughly 1 every 44 minutes.

High estimate: 50% of 6 million species = 3 million species, or roughly 1 every 9 minutes

Conservation Internationalhttp://tinyurl.com/3hzkax

Thanks for sticking around!


BHL Portalhttp://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Citehttp://cite.biodiversitylibrary.org

Internet Archivehttp://www.archive.org

Ubiohttp://www.ubio.org

Links


http://www.archive.org/

Credits

• Chris Freeland

• Suzanne Pilsk

• Tom Garnett

• Cathy Norton

• David Remsen


the biodiversity heritage library: growing from botanical origins

Education

smithsonian libraries

horticultural libraries

botanical publications

botanical collections

botanical members

botanical origins martin

harvard botany libraries

kew botany libraries