The Biodiversity Heritage Library 10 Years and More! Martin R. Kalfatovic. TDWG 2016. Centro de Transferencia Tecnológica y Educación Continua (CTEC) San Carlos, Santa Clara, Costa Rica. 7 December 2016.

1. Martin R. Kalfatovic
Program Director
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Smithsonian Libraries
The Biodiversity Heritage Library
10 Years and More!
TDWG 2016 |
CTEC
December 2016
San Carlos, Costa
Rica

2. “The cultivation of natural history
cannot be efficiently carried out
without reference to an extensive
library.”
Charles Darwin, et al (1847)

5. Inspiring Discovery through Free Access
to Biodiversity Knowledge
10 years of inspiring discovery
15th
-21st
centuries
through
free & open access
to biodiversity literature & archives
from the
Mission
The Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research
methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity
literature openly available to the world as part of a
global biodiversity community.

6. Natural history literature and archives contain
information that is critical to studying life on Earth.
SPECIES
DESCRIPTIONS
DISTRIBUTION
RECORDS
HISTORY OF
SCIENTIFIC
DISCOVERY
CLIMATE
RECORDS
INFORMATION
ON EXTINCT
SPECIES
SCIENTIFIC
OBSERVATIONS
ECOSYSTEM
PROFILES
SCIENTIFIC
ILLUSTRATIONS

8. Extensive. Open. Global

9. “BHL came to the rescue when a planned trip to
work in the Mertz Library at The New York
Botanical Garden had to be cancelled due to
Hurricane Sandy. Thanks to the online resources
available through BHL I was able to source most of
the key works I needed, with their supporting
bibliographic information.”
Gina Douglas
Honorary Archivist
Linnean Society of London
Governance

10. Governance
2016 Members Council
RBG Kew
Executive Committee

11. BHL is a Global Consortium
17MEMBERS
AS OF DECEMBER 2016
16AFFILIATES
60+ WORLDWIDE PARTNERS

12. Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle
17MEMBERS
AS OF DECEMBER 2016
16AFFILIATES

13. BHL is a Global Consortium
17MEMBERS
AS OF DECEMBER 2016
16AFFILIATES
60+ WORLDWIDE PARTNERS
18!

14. “Last year I threw down the gauntlet to [BHL staff] and asked if
there was any possibility of BHL arranging to have made available
the entire run of the UK periodical The Gardeners' Chronicle. I
asked because there is nowhere in my country of residence
(Denmark) that holds it, requiring that I make time consuming and
expensive research trips to London or Cambridge in the UK should I
wish to examine the periodical. I was amazed and delighted that
BHL has achieved what I asked. This contribution to the BHL
catalogue has been a real boon to my research.”
Dr. Toby Musgrave
Horticulturalist & Botanist
Lecturer, Danish Institute for Study Abroad
BHL Content

15. 50+MILLION
PAGES
TITLES VOLUMES
112,000+ 190,000+
172+MILLIONINSTANCES OF TAXONOMIC NAMES
530+IN-COPYRIGHT TITLES LICENSED FOR BHL
AGREEMENTS
WITH 230+
LICENSORS
*Stats as of November 2016

16. BHL includes all
levels of organismic
organization, from
genes to
ecosystems, as well
as other disciplines
affecting the study
of the biodiversity of
life on earth.

17. Not just “heritage”
collections
> 23% of BHL's collection of
188,970 items is post-1922
> 72.3% of BHL’s collection is
free of copyright restriction in
the United States
As of August 2016

19. Systema naturae
per regna tria
naturae.
Ed. 10, 1758.
biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/542
___________________
Considered the starting
point of zoological
nomenclature.
Listed about 10,000
species of organisms, of
which about 6,000 are
plants and 4,236 are
animals.
The earliest work in BHL is
Theophrasti De Historia plantarum liber primus
(1483)
biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40913187

20. Logbook of the
yacht "France"
Whitney South Sea
Expedition of the American
Museum of Natural History
Volume: v.2 (1926-1928)
biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44821245
__________________
BHL includes over 100,000
pages of Field Notes and
related archival material.
Ongoing transcription projects
will make these fully
searchable.

21. Bonn Zoological
Bulletin 61 (1): 135-
39 (July 2012)
biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4482124
___________________
With the assistance of
BioStor, BHL now indexes
over 202,000 articles,
chapters or other “segments”
of BHL content.
These are all searchable
through the bibliographic
interface to BHL.
Scotopteryx kuznetzovi
(Wardikian, 1957)
(Lepidoptera, Geometridae,
Larentiinae),
a new species for the fauna of
Iran and Turkey
Hossein Rajaei Sh.* & Dieter
Stuning

22. Charles Darwin’s Library
biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/darwi
nlibrary
___________________
A digital edition and virtual
reconstruction of the surviving
books owned by Charles Darwin.
It also provides full transcriptions of
his annotations and marks. These
works provide important insight into
the development of Darwin’s ideas
on evolution and natural selection.
"If this were true, adios theory"
Charles Darwin wrote these words in
response to reading Principles of
Geology, v. 2 (1837) by Charles
Lyell, who was arguing that changes
in species have limitations. Darwin,
on the other hand, argued that
changes in species are infinite and
continuous, an integral concept
crucial to his theory of evolution.

23. “BHL is a tremendous and extremely
valuable resource. It has done an
enormous amount to enhance the
capacity of developing countries to
undertake taxonomic research on their
biota.”
Dr. Dai Herbert
Malacologist
KwaZulu-Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg
Usage: Macro

24. 2016
198,747 visitors | March 2016
Past 12 Months
2.2m sessions
1.2m visitors
2007

25. 1. London
2. Paris
3. New York
4. Washington
5. Mexico City
6. Berlin
7. Sydney
8. Vienna
9. Sao Paulo
10. Madrid

26. 13.5% sessions
Mobile Sessions FY 2016
9.3% sessions
Mobile Sessions FY 2013

27. "I think BHL is one of the most important and
useful resources online right now. Judging by
how often I use it, I’d say it has an impact on
my research commensurate with that of
Google Scholar or Web of Science.”
Andrew Durso
Ph.D. Student, Herpetology
Biology Department
Utah State University
Expanding
Directions

28. 107,000+
IMAGES IN FLICKR
TOTAL IMAGES
TAGGED29,900+
202+MILLION
TOTAL VIEWS ON IMAGES
OF TOTAL FLICKR
COLLECTION TAGGED
TAGGED IMAGES IN
EOL
27% 18,000+
BHL FLICKR NAMED 1 OF WIRED’S
27 MUST-FOLLOW FEEDS IN
THE WORLD OF SCIENCE
*Stats as of November 2016
WWW.FLICKR.COM/BIODIVLIBRARY

29. Engagement
BHL is used in exhibitions in our
partner institutions, such as “Once
There Were Billions” at the National
Museum of Natural History.

30. “Congratulations on a superior on-line library service that is of
great help to anybody that has no direct access to old literature
(like many scientists in developing countries). I used to be
located in the Natural History Museum in Leiden, Netherlands
with an excellent library, but after my retirement I moved to
Brazil and lost direct contact with the Leiden library. In many
cases BHL now provides what I am looking for.”
Dr. Marinus Hoogmoed
Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians, 1963-2003
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
BHL Technology

31. BHL Technical Platform
Continuing to build for sustainability
• BHL Public Website hosted by the
Smithsonian Institution (Nov. 2016)
• All files stored actively at the Internet
Archive (and the IA back up facilities)
• Dark archive of all BHL files stored at
the Smithsonian (with regular file
harvest)
• Additional copy of BHL files at the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt)
• Development work based at the
Missouri Botanical Garden

32. CUSTOM PDF
DOWNLOADS
517,000+
TO DATE
ARTICLE
INDEXING
202,000+
TO DATE
DOI
ASSIGNMENT
104,000+
TO DATE
BHL offers a range of free services
API &
DATA
EXPORTS
TAXONOMIC
NAME
SEARCHING
REFERENCE
MANAGEMENT
TOOLS
*Stats as of November 2016

33. DOI
ASSIGNMENT
104,000+
TO DATEThe birds of Australia (1865) by John Gould
http://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.8367
Enables persistent citation of
BHL content in publications. Most
cited BHL item is Systema
Naturae (1758)

34. TAXONOMIC
NAME
SEARCHING
The Global Names
Architecture (GNA) is a
system of web-services
which helps people to
register, find, index,
check and organize
biological scientific
names and interconnect
on-line information about
species.
Names Discovery Engines
•NetiNeti
•TaxonFinder

35. “I am pretty sure I exclaimed ‘this is
amazing!’ out loud as soon as I discovered
BHL, and I immediately bookmarked it in my
browser. BHL helps fill this void by providing
such resources freely to the public.”
Aaron Sims
Rare Plant Botanist
California Native Plant Society (CNPS)
Finances

37. Expanding Access to Biodiversity
Literature
•Funded by the Institute of Museum and
Library Services (IMLS) in 2015 as part of the
National Leadership Grants for Libraries
program.
•Two-year award for $846,457.
•Will help libraries, museums, and natural
history societies make their content more
widely available by providing the tools and
support necessary to facilitate contribution to
the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
through BHL.
•Lead Institution: The New York Botanical
Garden.
•Participating Institutions: Harvard Ernst Mayr
Library of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology (MCZ), Missouri Botanical Garden
(MBG), and Smithsonian Libraries (SIL).
•Progress to date: 2274 volumes (169 titles;
245,434 pages); 86 in copyright titles from 45
contributors.

38. Foundations to Actions: Extending
Innovations in Digital Libraries in
Partnership with NDSR Learners
•A digital stewardship residency project
funded by the Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS).
•Two-year award for $370,756.
•5 residents at 6 geographically-distributed
partners will plan and develop a next
generation digital library using the
Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) as a test-
bed.
•Outcomes will include a best practices
document for digital libraries incorporating
transcriptions, image searching, collection
analysis techniques and improved
connections to museums, archives and other
relevant databases.
•Lead Institution: Harvard MCZ.
•Participating Institutions: Field Museum of
Natural History, Chicago Botanic Garden,
Missouri Botanical Garden, Los Angeles
County Museum of Natural History, and
Smithsonian Libraries.

39. Biodiversity Heritage Library
Field Notes Project
•Funded by Council on Library and
Information Resources (CLIR) in 2015 as part of
Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and
Archives.
•Two-year award for $491,713.
•Will coordinate work to digitize field notes,
assign metadata, and publish online through
BHL & Internet Archive.
•Lead Institutions: Smithsonian Libraries and
Smithsonian Institution Archives.
•Participating Institutions: Missouri Botanical
Garden, Peter H. Raven Library; American
Museum of Natural History; Yale Peabody
Museum; Harvard University Herbaria, Botany
Libraries; Harvard University, Museum of
Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library;
University of California, Berkeley Museum of
Vertebrate Zoology; The New York Botanical
Garden, The LuEsther T. Mertz Library; The
Field Museum; and Internet Archive.

40. 2006 – 2016
Grants Received (by year)

41. 2006 – 2016
Grants Received (by Lead Institution)

42. FUNDING SOURCES
• Member and Affiliate Dues & Fees
• Institutional Endowments
• Grants
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Arcadia Fund
• Council on Library & Information
Resources
• Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation
• Institute of Museum & Library Services
• JRS Foundation
• MacArthur Foundation
• Mellon Foundation
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Richard Lounsbery Foundation
• U.S. Federal Funding
• Federal allocation to Smithsonian
Libraries
• Donations
• Product Development
• Institutional Subventions
• In-Kind Contributions

43. CASH & IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS
DIRECT STAFF
$1,112,785.14
VALUE
OF
MEMBER & AFFILIATE
CONTRIBUTIONS 2015
OTHER
$246,123.06
2014
VS
2015
TOTAL IN-KIND
CONTRIBUTIONS
2014
$1,437,666.46
2015
$1,358,908.20
14TOTAL MEMBER & AFFILIATE
FTEs WORKING ON BHL IN 2015

44. “BHL is an awesomely useful resource!
It’s very helpful to have the BHL when
I’m traveling away from ‘home base.’
No need to carry around a rare 120
year old book if you can just open a
scanned file of it on your computer.”
Dr. Christopher Mah
Invertebrate Zoologist
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Outreach

45. 55,000+
TOTAL FOLLOWERS ON
SOCIAL MEDIA
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
10,800+
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
10,900+
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
26,000+
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
4,900+
AVERAGE
MONTHLY
READERS (CY16)
2,300+
FOLLOW @BIODIVLIBRARY
*Stats as of November 2016
TOTAL FOLLOWERS
2,400+
* BHL Instagram launched August 2016

46. MAJOR MEETINGS
• 2016 DLF Forum, Milwaukee, 6-9 November 2016
• GBIF 23, Brasilia, 24-28 October 2016
• Library Leaders Forum 2016, Internet Archive, San
Francisco, 26-28 October 2015
• CETAF 40 General Assembly Madrid, Spain, 18-19
October 2016
• The 8th Shanghai International Library Forum,
Shanghai, 6-8 July 2016
• SPNHC 31st Annual Meeting, Berlin, 19-26 June
2016
• Open Repositories, Ireland, June 2016
• Society for Scholarly Publishing, Vancouver, June
2016
• BHL/ITIS/EOL/GBIF Meeting, Prague, June 2016
• BHL 2016 Annual Meeting and 7th Global BHL
Meeting, London, 11-15 April 2016
• BHL Mexico Workshop, CONABIO, Mexico City,
Mexico, 2-4 December 2015
• LITA Forum, Minneapolis, 15 November 2015 BHL
• Staff Meeting, Washington, DC, 12-13 November
2015
• Library Leaders Forum 2015, Internet Archive, San
Francisco, 21-23 October 2015
• 22nd GBIF Governing Board Meeting (GB22),
Madagascar, 5-11 October 2015
• TDWG 2015, Nairobi, 28 September - 1 October
2015

47. Engage with audiences

48. Support BHL Financial Sustainability
CafePress: http://www.cafepress.com/biodiversityheritagelibrary

49. Digital Library
Federation (DLF) 2016
Community/Capacity
Award

50. AWARDS
• Digital Library Federation (DLF) 2016
Community/Capacity Award (joint recipient with
Archive of American Broadcasting).
2016
• Internet Archive Hero Award. Global Leaders
in Sharing Knowledge.
2015
• Laureate. IDG’s Computerworld Honors
Program.
• Charles Robert Long Award of Extraordinary
Merit. Council on Botanical and Horticultural
Libraries.
2013
• Victorian Government Arts Leadership
Recognition Award (BHL Australia).
2012
• John Thackray Medal. The Society for the
History of Natural History.
2011
• Outstanding Collaboration Award. Association
for Library Collections & Technical Services
(ALCTS).
2010

51. ... meeting the aspirational goals
of the Convention on Biodiversity
and the Darwin Declaration
A Larger Context
BHL supports institutions in ...

52. “Such exchange of information shall include
exchange of results of technical, scientific
and socio-economic research, as well as
information on training and surveying
programmes, specialized knowledge,
indigenous and traditional knowledge as
such and in combination with the
technologies referred to in Article 16,
paragraph 1. It shall also, where feasible,
include repatriation of information.”
A Larger Context
Convention on Biodiversity (CBD Article 17, 1992)

53. “The essential requirements for
accessing and utilising this global
information are: that existing
information held in literature and
by current experts is made
available electronically ”
A Larger Context
Darwin Declaration (1998)

54. “Joining BHL represents a greater opportunity for
CONABIO to provide broader access to Mexico’s
biodiversity knowledge contained within published
literature. We believe that only with a well-informed
society it is possible to develop and strengthen a
culture of appreciation and valuation of Mexico’s
natural capital.”
Dr. José Sarukhán
CONABIO National Coordinator
Mexico City, Mexico
In Closing …

55. BHL strives to be part of that larger "Biodiversity
Commons" and provide a space for the literature
of biodiversity to be available such that ...
it is a zone of fair use
sustainable use without jeopardizing original
ownership rights
respects organizational/individual "moral
rights" (rights of authors)
protects against unauthorized commercial use
Tom Moritz, "A Vision for the Biodiversity Commons" (2004)

56. By engaging with the larger
biodiversity community and major
stakeholder institutions, BHL is
creating a sustainable
biodiversity commons for the
literature of taxonomy.

57. The Commons succeeds when,
among other elements, there is
"the presence of a
community; small and stable
populations with a thick
social network and social
norms".
BHL has created that community
among our natural history and
botanical libraries
Elinor Ostrom, "Sustainable development and the
tragedy of commons" (2009)

58. Specimens, data, publications...

59. “I have no doubt that in
reality the future will be
vastly more surprising than
anything I can image.”
J.B.S. Haldane (1927)

60. Gracias!
Discussion