Teaching BHL

The Biodiversity Heritage Library California Academy of Sciences Phoebe Buguey & Becky Morin May 7 th , 2010

Digitization effort of 12 major natural history repositories
Serve and preserve the legacy literature (pre-1923) of biodiversity
Abides by copyright laws and respects intellectual and creative property
Particular relevance to systematic biology, which tends to rely on historic literature
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Defining BHL

Funding Sources
Encyclopedia of Life grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Additional grants have been received from:
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
The Richard Lounsbery Foundation
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
Generous support from members’ parent institutions

Participating Repositories
American Museum of Natural History (New York)
Academy of Natural Sciences Philadelphia
California Academy of Sciences
Field Museum (Chicago)
Natural History Museum (London)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington)
Missouri Botanical Gardens (St. Louis)
New York Botanical Gardens (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 Institute

Encyclopedia of Life
Partnership between the scientific community and the general public
Goal: Make knowledge about the world’s organisms freely available to all
Anyone can add text, images, videos, comments or tags
Expert curators ensure quality by authenticating materials
http://www.eol.org/

EOL Species Page http://www.eol.org/pages/965332

BHL on EOL

BHL: The Task
Core Literature Pre-1923: 100 million pages (?)
All Pre-1923 Literature: 120-150 million pages
All Literature: 280-320 million pages

BHL: The Achievement
Approximately 29.5 million pages (estimated on 05/03/2010)
Monthly average: 600,000 pages
1.3 million catalog records
73% are monographs (remainder serials)
63% English
30% date before 1923

BHL Advantages
Persistent URL
Semantic and structural markup in conformance with NLM DTD
Iterative processing of BHL will:
Increase the number of name strings in uBio’s NameBank
Increase the accuracy of name
string recognition

BHL Advantages
Access to rare articles
Traveling researchers
Researchers with less developed libraries
Long-term management of digital assets at no cost to users
Publishers’ content is embedded

BHL Portal
Library catalog-like interface (browse and search)
Provides volume/issue/article/page access
Iterative development based on community feedback

BHL: TaxonFinder by uBio
BHL uses TaxonFinder
Developed by collaborators at uBio.org
Locates and identifies scientific names within digital text
Certain fonts or other technical limitations may limit results

Generating Bibliographies on BHL: Method 1
Go to “ Tools ” in the upper, right corner

2. Scroll down to “ Bibliography by URL ,” and copy the appropriate taxonomic string for your search

3. Paste the URL into the navigation bar at the top of your browser and change the name to the species you are interested in

4. After you hit “Enter” on your keyboard, you will be brought to the bibliography page

Enter the name in the search box near the top, right corner

2. Select “ Names ” from the dropdown menu to the right of the search box and click “ Go ”

3. Select the option that best fits your search

4. You will be brought to the bibliography page

You can search by more than “Name,”
and the path to the results is much the same

You can use the tag cloud to browse for your taxon, and clicking on the tag will take you to the bibliography
**Note: You can change the number of displayed tags with the “Show” feature**

2. You can also browse by other topics using the “Browse by” feature

BHL: Search Considerations
IMPORTANT WARNING!
The search box often will not return as many results as the URL method
Why?
The URL method searches within the text (TaxonFinder)
The search box only searches within the specified field (title, author, etc)

Generating a PDF from BHL
Find the title you want to download
Select the icon for that book

3. Click “ Select pages to download ” by hovering your mouse over “ Download/About this book ”

4. You will need to enter the email address where you want the pages sent

5. Next you will be asked to fill in basic information for the item you are downloading

Why should I take the time?
BHL is a nonprofit resource
Easier for the next time/person
Community effort to properly disseminate relevant literature

6. Once you’ve filled out the information, click “ Next ”

7. Select the pages you want to download
**NOTE: You can see a thumbnail of a page by clicking on the corresponding page icon**

8. Once you’ve selected your pages, click “ Done ”

9. You will receive a confirmation email and then another email that provides a link to your PDF download

What can I do with the content?
Published in 1922 or earlier: public domain
BHL will NOT seek to assert any intellectual property rights
Date of publication after 1923: Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial 2.5 license
Responsible Use
Noncommercial
Attribution
Contact copyright holders for commercial use

Contact Us
Please contact us with questions:
http://research.calacademy.org/library
Becky Morin
User Services Librarian
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118
415-379-5495 (direct)
[email_address]
Images from Curtis's Botanical Magazine and provided courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Teaching BHL

by Becky Morin

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Teaching BHL

by Becky Morin

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