Presentation at ALA Midwinter 2012 Dallas, TX

1. Smithsonian Institution Libraries:
Partnering In Research
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Suzanne C. Pilsk
With the Help from a Whole Host of Others

2. Smithsonian Institution

5. Smithsonian Institution Libraries
History of Science and Technology
Latino History and Culture
Materials Research
Modern and Contemporary Art
Museology
African Art Native American History and Culture
African American History and Culture Natural History
Anthropology Postal History
American Art Tropical Biology
American History Trade Literature
Asian and Middle Eastern Art World’s Fair Ephemera
Aviation history and Space Flight
Design and Decorative Arts
Environmental Management and
Ecology

6. Support for the Sciences
Taxonomic Nomenclature
Identifying and Naming of Species
– New, Old, Re-name, Misspellings,
Synonyms, Homonyms, Splits, Joins, …
– Authorship: Who, When, Former, …
Rules:
International Code of Botanical Nomenclature
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria

7. Importance of Publication
Who Writes
Publishes
and Distributes
FIRST
WINS

8. Justification of NH Libraries!
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

9. Libraries and Librarians

10. Metadata Fail

11. Tools of the Trade
Taxonomic Literature 2nd Ed.
Index Animalium

12. How to make THIS into 1’s and 0’s

13. Digitization

14. Metadata Successes

15. The Squire

16. Connecting Index to Sources

17. Bibliography = Metadata

19. Lost… Just Lost

23. Database Parsing To Find Pieces and Parts
ID Image ID Page Name & reference
"362382","SIL34_02_24_0193","6101","splendens Turdus, W. E. Leach, Zool. Miscell. II. 1815, 30.”

29. Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition
Taxonomic Literature: A selective guide to
botanical publications and
collections with dates,
commentaries and types (second
edition)
15 volumes guide to the literature of
systematic botany published
between 1753 and 1940
Organized by author ~ Citation for the author’s
surname
Numbered entries of the author’s publications ~
Suggested short-title & abbreviation of short-title for
use in taxonomic publications
TL2 is a standard by which author’s names and titles
should be abbreviated

30. Digitizing The Entire Title:
Scope of Work
• Approximately 11, 500 scanned
pages
• Average of 3,300 characters per page
• Approximately 44, 000 author
entries
• Image files approx. 9 GB in size

37. ★ Linked Open Data – 5 Stars ★
★ Available on the web (whatever
format), but with an open licence
★★ Available as machine-readable
structured data (e.g. excel instead of • Shareable
image scan of a table)
★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format • Extensible
(e.g. CSV instead of excel)
★★★★ All the above plus, Use open • Re-Usable
standards from W3C (RDF and
SPARQL) to identify things, so that • International
people can point at your stuff
★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your
data to other people’s data to
provide context

38. TL2: Linked Open Data
Botanist Pages
Triple stores of Name relationship to
Books
Triple stores of Name relationship to
Standard Abbreviation
Book Pages
Triple stores of Book relationship to
Name
Triple stores of Book relationship to
TL2 numbering
Triple stores of Book relations to
Standard Abbreviation

39. http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/

40. Future

42. Life and Literature Conference 2011

43. Life and Literature Conference 2011

44. Life and Literature Conference 2011
Compelling Use Cases for Digitization
Including cool and unexpected
Once digitized, text is just text
Significant amount not discoverable
“So in not fully investigating the product of the
digital projects, are we selling scholarship short?
What scholarship in the digital age means? And
what are the real tools we need to do it?”
Elycia Wallis, Museum
Victoria

45. Contact information: PilskS@si.edu
Thanks To Many
• Joel Richard • Robin Everly
• Martin Kalfatovic • Gilbert Borrego
• Grace Costantino • Carolyn Sheffield
• Courtney Shaw • Bianca Crowley
• Keri Thompson • Becky Morin
• Interns too numerous to • Mike Lichtenburg
name • David Remsen
• Volunteers too numerous to • Patrick Leary
name • Chris Freeland

46. Interesting Sources
Index Animalium http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/indexanimalium/
Taxonomic Literature (3) www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Life and Literature Conference
www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2 http://www.lifeandliterature.org/
Connecting Content Smithsonian Institution
research.calacademy.org/library/fieldnotes www.si.edu/
The Field Book Project Biodiversity Heritage Library
www.mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/index.html www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Linked Open Data Internet Archive
linkeddata.org/ www.archive.org/