The Biodiversity Heritage LibraryOrigin | Growth | Partnerships

BHL Africa Organisational and Planning Meeting14 June 02012 | Kirstenbosch | Cape Town, South AfricaMartin R. Kalfatovic | Smithsonian Libraries

A Well-Appointed Library

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

A large library

Yet another physical difficulty is the task of assembling the library and indexes which will enable the student to work under proper conditions…. the beginner must now be prepared to spend liberally, or else must establish himself in an institution where a large library exists; if he work by himself with only a few books, he will have to confine himself to a very narrow specialty indeed.

'The Limitations of Taxonomy' by J.M. Aldrich, Science, April 22, 1927, vol. LXV, no. 1686, p.381

Missouri Botanical Garden & BHL Pre-historyIllustrated Gardens, 1997

Smithsonian Libraries & BHL Pre-historyBiologia Centrali-American, 2004

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

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.

February 2008. Launch of EOL species pages and associated BHL literature

BHL Timeline

Libraries & Laboratories2005, London

Biodiversity Heritage Library

American Museum of Natural History

Field Museum California Academy of

Sciences Cornell University Library Museum of Comparative

Zoology (Harvard) New York Botanical

Garden Natural History Museum

(London)

Smithsonian Libraries Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Missouri Botanical Garden Academy of Natural

Sciences (Philadelphia) Marine Biological

Laboratory/WHOI Harvard Botany Libraries

US Geological Survey Library

New &Improved

15. Library of Congress Agreement to join, but not yet signed

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How is BHL Organized?Executive Committee - Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary - Project Director & Program Manager - Technical Director

Steering Committee - Contribute funds to the Secretariat - 9 institutional members

Institutional Council - Interested institutions who sign participation agreement

Pan-BHL Staff - Global Coordinator, Collections Coordinator, Data Analyst

BHL Executive Committee, 2011-Nancy Gwinn | Connie Rinaldo | Susan Fraser

Funding- Private Grants- US Federal Appropriations- Membership dues- Institutional support

Accomplishments

Biodiversity Heritage Library: 2006

Biodiversity Heritage Library: 2012

38,887,920 pages105,762 items55,701 titles

> 390,000 views in 10 months

> 30,000+ images

Meetings

Life and Literature Conference and JRS

Africa meetings Chicago, IllinoisNovember 2011

BHL & EOL BoothAmerican Library Association MeetingDallas, TX, January 2012

SomeStatistics

Usage StatsQ1, FY12 (October-December 2011)

288.287 visits 1.376 million page views 46.33% Bounce rate 46.72% new users

~1.6 m users | 16 m page views

233 countries

TechnicalDevelopments

Scanning a Books

The 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

BHL Scanning Centers

New Jersey 10 Scribe facility at

New York Public Library

Boston 10 Scribe facility at

Boston Public Library Other

1 Scribe, 2 shifts, London

2 Scribes at UIUC

BHL Scanning Centers

Washington, DC 1 Scribe machine at

Smithsonian Libraries 10 Scribe facility at

Library of Congress with Fedlink (operational Spring 2008)

In January, 2012, a new application was added to the BHL administration dashboard that allows direct upload of images from BHL to Flickr, with embedded metadata and page links included.

Macaw (Metadata Collection and Workflow). Scanning workflow and ingest mangement tool. Based on “Paginator” (MOBOT), Macaw allows for creating robust page level metadata and pushing content to other repositories (e.g. Internet Archive and local storage) .

Workflow Tools- Scan/Bidlist- Monographic de-dupper- Wonderfetch

Social MediaSocial Media

FacebookTotal Post Views: 245,095Conversation Reach (Total Post Interactions/# of people who like our page): .95 or 95%Audience Growth (Total new people who like our page): 338Audience Engagement (Total post interactions): 1,620Total Monthly active Users by End of Q1, FY12: 1,273Total Page Likes: 1,871

Twitter

Clicks on Links in Tweets: 1,164Audience Engagement (@mentions + RTs): 380Total Followers: 1,306Audience Growth (new followers): 181Conversation Reach (audience engagement/followers): .33 or 33%Mentions by Influencers: 221

Flickr

Total Views: 386,744Total Followers: 365New Images Added: 8,904Audience Engagement (total comments, favorites, notes & tags, and added to galleries): 1,382

Blog

Total Visits: 4,868Unique Visitors: 3,540

“Thank you much for your help. It is so useful as I am right now working on the fishes of Ganges. Moreover it is so great that the library provides classic literature on fishes and it was a dream to me [when] I started my taxonomy ten years back. It is marvellous [what] you did for us which are badly in need of old literature. Thanks a lot.”“Thank you much for your help. It is so useful as I am right now working on the fishes of Ganges. Moreover it is so great that the library provides classic literature on fishes and it was a dream to me [when] I started my taxonomy ten years back. It is marvellous [what] you did for us which are badly in need of old literature. Thanks a lot.”

What an absolutely wonderful site. It is a treasure trove of information. Thank you!

May I compliment you on this splendid service? The Library's invaluable for my work on seasonal

variability of climate and vector-borne disease in British India, 1875-1940.

I really appreciate your work. The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an excellent resource that regularly helps my assistant and I obtain original descriptions for plants .... I feel so privileged to be working in a day in age when such resources are so readily available and easy to obtain.

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

Charles Darwin, et al (1847)

Darwin, C. R. et al. 1847. Copy of Memorial to the First Lord of the Treasury [Lord John Russell], respecting the Management of the British Museum. Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers 1847, paper number (268), volume XXXIV.253 (13 April): 1-3. [Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online]

Looking Forward

Thank You

Martin R. Kalfatovic | Smithsonian Libraries