The Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library Martin R. Kalfatovic Suzanne C. Pilsk Smithsonian Institution Libraries 30 January 2008

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

BHL Timeline 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.

BHL Members American Museum of Natural History (New York)‏ Field Museum (Chicago)‏ Natural History Museum (London)‏ Smithsonian Institution (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

BHL Members

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (contributing member)‏

Scheme for addition of European and Asian partners under consideration

Additional categories of membership under consideration

BHL Focus: Literature

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

All pre-1923: 120-150 million pages

All literature: 280-320 million pages

BHL Focus: Literature

Selection Tools

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

Monographic “de-duping” algorithm

OCLC Collection Analysis

1.3 million catalogue records

73% are monographs (remainder are serials at title-level)

63% is English language material

The next most popular language (9%) is German

About 30% of material was published before 1923

BHL Collections

Selection

Marine Biological Laboratory/WHOI

Marine monographs

General Science

Museum of Comparative Zoology

MCZ publications

Herpetology monographs and serials

Ichthyology monographs and serials

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

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

Selection

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Smithsonian publications

Entomology collection

Marine mammals

Fishes

Selected special collections materials

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

Scribe Scanner

Single Scribe Machine

Custom built by the Internet Archive

Human operated

3,500 page per shift per day

BHL Scanning Centers

Northeast Regional Scanning Center

10 Scribe machines

MBL/WHOI

Harvard

New York Public Library

10 Scribe machines

AMNH

NYBG

University of Illinois

2 Scribe machines

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 with Fedlink under construction (Spring 2008)‏

Scanning Stats

5.5 million plus total pages scanned

500,000 plus from the Natural History Museum, London

1,000,000 from the MBL/WHOI library

Fieldiana, 75,000 plus pages

Scanning Stats

Smithsonian Libraries

250,000 pages (non-Scribe scanned, 1996-2007)‏

100,000 Scribe scanned pages (since August 2007)‏

Other libraries (non-Scribe)‏

MOBOT: 780,000

AMNH: 150,000

But what about ...

Difficult (impossible?) to re-purpose much of the material

Quality of images often questionable

“Frankenbooks”

Sketchy / inaccurate bibliographic data

But what about

Persistent Identifiers

Stable URL

Handle

DOI

BICI/SICI

ISSN

ISBN

LSIDs

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Structural Markup

<article>

<title> A BRIEF CONSIDERATION OF CERTAIN POINTS IN THE MORPHOLOGY OFTHE FAMILY CHALCIDID^E.*. </title>

<author> L. O. HOWARD. </author>

<volume> 1 </volume>

<issue> 2 </issue>

<start_page> 65 </start_page>

<end_page> 86 </end_page>

<start_count_page> 85 </start_count_page>

<end_count_page> 106 </end_count_page>

<start_page_image_file> 3908800908001101smthrich_0085.djvu </start_page_image_file>

<end_page_image_file> 3908800908001101smthrich_0106.djvu </end_page_image_file>

</article>

Semantic Markup

GoldenGATE The intention of the GoldenGATE editor is to build a bridge between NLP components and XML markup of natural language text according to arbitrary XML schemas. It allows the deployment of NLP components to marking up the bodies of literature they were designed for. In this way, it enables transforming the texts into XML content according to an XML schema that was designed to gain maximum benefit from the knowledge provided in them.

Integrated Open Taxonomic Access (INOTAXA)

10.7 million name strings in NameBank

Uses sophisticated algorithm (TaxonGrab) to locate likely name strings in OCR text

Iterative processing of BHL texts will both increase the number of name strings in NameBank and increase the accuracy of name string recognition

Taxonomic Intelligence

BHL & Publishers

Permissions

Seek permissions from copyright holders

Opt in Copyright Model: The BHL will actively work with professional societies and associations to integrate their publications into the BHL in a way that serves the societies’ missions and goals

BHL will digitize learned society backfiles and mount them through the BHL Portal at no cost.

Will provide a set of files to the publishers for reuse as they see fit.

BHL Advantages

Use of the articles will increase as evidenced by citation upsurge

Long-term management of the digital assets is provided by the BHL at no cost

Publishers’ content is embedded in the emerging knowledge ecology that is sweeping biology in this century

Structural markup of backfiles into conformance with NLM DTD (just starting)‏

Successes

Entomological News

Journal of Hymenoptera Research

Herpetological Review

Publications of the San Diego Natural History Museum

California Academy of Sciences publications

And more ...

BHL Portal

Library catalog-like interface to BHL literature

Enhanced structural analysis to provide volume/issue/article page access to the literature

Iterative development based on feedback from user community

Provide access to two key audiences:

Humans

Machines

Page Delivery

Taxonomic Intelligence

Web 2.0 Features

Search

Browse

Discovered Bibliographies

Demos

BHL Portal www.biodiversitylibrary.org

uBio www.ubio.org

Funding & the Future

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

Additional support from parent institutions

Additional grants being actively pursued by BHL and individual members

Co-evolving bioinformatics resources produce a rich information ecology:

Consortium for the Barcoding of Life (CBOL) with gene sequences deposited in GenBank.

GBIF’s Electronic Catalog of Taxonomic Names

Hebaria and museum specimen databases

Financial Sustainability Strategy

Quick ramp-up high early costs – development, mass scanning, etc. Drive long-term costs down the asymptote toward zero.

Derive some long-term costs from the operating budgets of the member institutions. (examples under consideration: acquisitions budget, staff positions, etc.)‏

Financial Sustainability Strategy

Integrate functions/tasks with wider efforts where appropriate, e.g. mass storage.

Clear roles for staff who wear multiple hats. 1.5 grant funded positions currently but >15 staff who make substantive contributions.

The Long Now Strategy

Institutions that are creating the BHL exist to persist through time. That’s an important part of their business. Use them!

The future is uncertain, the technology landscape changes, people pass on. So create consortial structures that are low-overhead, flexible, and can respond quickly

Structure of the Encyclopedia of Life Serine Molecule

Serine Molecule Synthesis Center Field Museum Biodiversity Heritage Library Secretariat Smithsonian Education & Outreach Smithsonian/Harvard Informatics Marine Biological Laboratory & MOBOT

EOL Species Pages

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

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

Thank You ... for sticking around!

CREDITS