The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Project

All Change – adapt and survive in a digital age26th April 2007

Graham HigleyNatural History Museum

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Project

Graham Higley



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



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….



Taxonomic Literature

Over 250 years of the systematic description of life

Systema naturae (10th ed. 1758) by Carl von Linné




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




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



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)



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



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



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)



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



Components

Scan pages!

OCR the pages (and repeat regularly)

Taxonomic Intelligence – name management and linking to other name servers

Serve from 4 global locations



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



Internet Archive ‘Scribe’



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



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



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



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



www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Technology

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Project