Presented at EOL Semantic Reasoning Workshop, 6-7 Sep 2012, Washington DC.

1. BHL: Big Data, Big Challenges
Chris Freeland @chrisfreeland
Founding Technical Director, BHL
Sr. Director, University Academic Computing,
Washington University

2. >100,000 books, > 39 million pages, > 70TB data

3. BHL Architecture: Window Seat Ed.
Access
Data
APIs UI
Exports
Logic
Geocoding
Firewall
Data Transform
Name BHL DB Utilities
Finding
Storage
Images (JP2) Internet Archive
PDF
Coordinate-based OCR
XML metadata

4. BHL Content: Structured Data
• Metadata from Library catalogues at
title/volume level
<titleInfo>
<title>CaroliLinnaei ... Species plantarum :exhibentesplantas rite cognitas, ad genera
relatas, cum differentiisspecificis, nominibustrivialibus, synonymisselectis, locisnatalibus,
secundumsystemasexualedigestas...</title>
</titleInfo>
<titleInfo type="abbreviated"><title>Sp. Pl.</title></titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart>Linné, Carl von,</namePart>
<namePart type="date">1707-1778</namePart>
</name>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<genre authority="marcgt">book</genre>
<originInfo>
<place><placeTerm type="text">Holmiae :</placeTerm></place>
<publisher>ImpensisLaurentiiSalvii,</publisher><dateIssued>1753.</dateIssued>

5. BHL Content: Unstructured Data
More than 39 million pages!
….of uncorrected OCR 

6. Abbild ungen und Beschreibungen
der
Fische Syriens,
nebst
einer neuen Classification und Characteristik
sämmtlicher Gattungen
der
i
JOH. JAKOB HECKEL,
Inipectoi am k. k. Hof-Natur.-iUenkabinete in
Wien, mehr, yelelirt. UeHtllMeii. MIfglivd.
STUTTGART.
E. Schweizerbart' sehe Verlagshandlung,
1843.

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8. How to connect/consume
http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Developer+Tools+and+API
Data
APIs UI
Exports
BHL DB
Internet Archive
Images (JP2)
PDF
Coordinate-based OCR
XML metadata

9. BHL Data Challenge: Name Finding
pre-2007

10. BHL Data Challenge: Name Finding
• TaxonFinder algorithm in production since
2008
– More than 100 million candidate name strings
– More than 1.5 million unique, verified names
– Available through UI, APIs, Data Exports & Internet
Archive
• New collaboration with Global Names
– Improved algorithm, better precision & recall
– More data!

11. New Data Challenges
http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/BHL+and+Gaming
^Challenges framed as games
• Correcting OCR
• Rekeying Tables of Contents
• Researching candidate Scientific Names
• Image identification & extraction
– http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Art+of+Life
– Currently funded by NEH