BHL Technical Projects Updates
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BHL Technical Projects Update presented during the BHL Stafff and Technical Meeting on September 26-27, 2012 at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Cambridge, Massachusetts
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BHL Technical Projects Updates
- 1. Staff & Technical Meeting BHL Technical Project Update William Ulate BHL Technical Director Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Cambridge, Massachusetts Sept.26-27, 2012
- 2. BHL Technical Update • Merge the BHL Australia website User Interface and the BHL-US/UK website Functionality • CiteBank integration into BHL supported by the Global Names Architecture project (National Science Foudation) • The Art of Life: Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (National Endowment for the Humanities)
- 3. BHL Technical Update • BHL AU-USome • CiteBank integration into BHL – & the NSF Global Names Architecture requirements • The Art of Life project
- 4. BHL AU-USome (thanks to B.Crowley for the name)
- 7. 2011 Usability Test • A list of key differences between user interfaces • Feedback from (17) users on their preferences • Usability Test Notes and Survey Summary • Usability Test Report
- 8. BHL AU-Usome (2012) Usability Test Report – Names – OCR – Illustrations – More information on Species – Book Viewer – Advanced Search
- 9. BHL AU-USome New US/UK functionality since 2011 Home page Other • Featured Collections • Social Media (Like/Tweet) buttons • Browse by Collection • Advanced search interface • Links on top right of main page • DOIs added to bibliography page for titles – feedback, exports, members • Title variants in bibliography page for titles • Now Online stats box on main page • Schema.org markup added • Recently Added view (never in BHL-AU ) • Darwin's Library annotation viewer • Twitter feed integration • Icon to "Add record to Mendeley library" • Blog integration • Donate/Mailing List buttons • Flickr images on home page
- 11. BHL AU-USome Future article data model changes • In the book viewer, display a list of articles contained in the book/journal being viewed. Pick one and navigate to the start page. • Need a "landing page" for articles with article metadata. • Link to the book viewer, an external location (a PDF in another repository), or nothing. • Display Articles that match the search term in a new section of Search results. • Add an option to "View Record" or "View Article“. • Browsing should include include articles related, not only titles. • Allow users to print an article at the “build-your-own PDF” feature using the article data available.
- 12. BHL AU-USome • Advantages – AU and US share IDs across portals! – Model has been kept synchronized • Disadvantages – US Code modified since AU launched – AU didn’t incorporate certain functionality
- 13. BHL AU-USome Proposed Timeline 1. DESIGN PHASE – Aug. 6 –24. Input: Specifications/descriptions/notes about new features as soon as possible. Outcome: A full suite of designs, that incorporate comments from the 2011 usability survey and incorporating any new features that you have planned or are already building. 2. COMMENT AND RESPONSE PHASE – Aug. 24 – Sep. 14. Input: Comments to the suites of designs. Outcome: Comments and responses to comments 3. FINAL SIGN – Sep. 21 Output: The full suite of designs signed off by September 21, packaged, files transferred across to MOBOT. 4. Simon Sherrin VISIT TO Saint Louis, MO – Oct. 1 – 22. Output: BHL US codebase adapted to incorporate new designs. 5. NEW DESIGN IN PRODUCTION – .
- 14. DESIGN PHASE
- 18. Relations between links and functions
- 19. Wireframes of Different Layers
- 20. Wireframes of Different Layers
- 21. Coming soon…
- 22. CiteBank integration into BHL
- 23. Citebank is BHL is Citebank
- 24. CiteBank according to GNA • CiteBank will fulfill the role of the global repository for bibliographic citations relating to biodiversity. • Citebank will be an open environment for sharing and disseminating citations that suit taxonomists (series, volumes, articles, pages, and treatments. ). • Coming from multiple sources, raw citations are not standardized and CiteBank must provide reconciliation services to map variant forms together.
- 25. CiteBank according to GNA • The Citebank platform contains the aggregated bibliographies of BHL, other digital libraries, publishers, institutional repositories, and contributed bibliographies from specialist groups. • Citebank is built from the open-source publishing framework Drupal and includes community-authored components for the management of bibliographic citations.
- 26. Lessons Learned • Biblio/Drupal data model insufficient for mass of data envisioned for all biodiversity, too flat and difficult to expand in collaboration with Biblio development community • Data providers want their content in BHL, not a system alongside BHL • There is no real affinity between EOL / Scratchpads / GN / BHL around using the Biblio/Drupal components • Maintaining two platforms for biodiversity literature threatens BHL sustainability over the longer term
- 27. Where are we? • Articles – Extend BHL data model to store article metadata – Build process to harvest data from BioStor • Create user interfaces for adding article metadata and associated files – Define functional requirements as improvements to Drupal-based Citebank – Define process flow for adding article metadata and associated files – Implement UI changes • Change BHL UI to accommodate article search • Change BHL UI to accommodate article display (TOC)
- 28. Functional requirements for a citation repository • IMPORTING (Administrator) • IMPORTING (General User) • RECORD CREATION (General User) • RECORD EDITING (General User) • USER MANAGEMENT (Administrator) • BROWSE (General User) • CITATION TYPES • OAI HARVESTING • SPECIFICATIONS FOR DATA PROVIDERS PAGE • CONTRIBUTORS PAGE • REPORTING • GLOBAL UPDATES (Administrator) • RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTENT FILES AND CITATIONS • FIELDS
- 29. Where are we? • Link Outs – Extend BHL data model to link out to titles and items in other systems – Create user interfaces for adding links out to titles & items in other systems – Adjust BHL web display to show links out to titles & items in other systems • Name-finding Improvements – Enhance name finding algorithms – Review changes to BHL data model to accommodate enhancements – Review changes to BHL UI to accommodate enhancements
- 30. Where are we going? • Citation Reconciliation • Augment existing BHL APIs to return article metadata and associated files • Respond to requests for improvements from ZooBank & GN
- 31. Global Names
- 32. The Art of Life Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data; Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource; Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources; Objective 4: Integrate the Steve.museum application and Flickr APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means; Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons. .
- 33. The Art of Life Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data; Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource; Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources; Objective 4: Integrate the platforms like Flickr and Wikimedia APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means; Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons. .
- 34. The Art of Life Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data; Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource; Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources; Objective 4: Integrate the platforms like Flickr and Wikimedia APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means; Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons. .
- 35. The Art of Life Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data; Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource; Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources; Objective 4: Integrate the Steve.museum application and Flickr APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means; Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons. .
- 36. The Art of Life Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data; Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource; Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources; Objective 4: Integrate the platforms like Flickr and Wikimedia APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means; Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons. .
- 37. The Art of Life
- 38. Staff & Technical Meeting Thank you Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Cambridge, Massachusetts Sept.26-27, 2012
Editor's Notes
- On July 2011, the new BHL Australia site goes live.
- Many people liked the appearance of the site: the color, the modern look, the simplicity and elegance of the design.It was considered a dramatic improvement in overall design and usability, but there were key differences with specific functions/features that needed be tested and compared while both were running in a production environment.With the AU UI out, there was an opportunity to compare the US UI and make improvements.BHL-E UI was not factored into the comparison because it used a different codebase and was not yet released by then.
- Key differencesAU UI: Graphically oriented; Based on latest release of Open Library book viewer, incorporates taxonomic name services but not page navigation, or scroll barUS UI: Textually oriented; Uses older release of Open Library book viewer with additional Iframes for displaying added services incl. page navigation and taxonomic namesUsability Test:9 testers / 17 users interviewed, it was decided which differences to survey.Usability Test ReportA summary of the Requirements from the 2011 Usability Test according to the problems identified by the users followed by recommendation of changes.Also, at Life and Literature there was a discussion with Staff and after that, a meeting with Ely Wallis in STL to Plan further activities.
- NamesSummary IssuesSome users said that finding Names was not apparent enough on the Australian site.On both side, many users were confused by the term “Names” and did not understand that it meant “Scientific Names” and not “Personal” “Corporate” or other.RecommendationsBHL-AustraliaWhen users rollover the page image and it brings up the 5 symbols, change the rollover text to say “Scientific Names on this Page” and when they click on uBio have it also drop down with the text "Scientific names on this page" which the general public can understand.Use a more universal symbol that conveys the concept of Scientific Names instead of uBioOCRSummary IssuesParticipants did not know what “OCR” was or what they could do with it.People did not know what “View Text” meant.There is an expectation that users should be able to do Full-text searching on both sites, based on customary behavior in other sites and software applications.Testers observed Users trying to search on a page through the Ctrl+F key combination.RecommendationsBHL-AustraliaChange “View Text on this Page” label to “View OCR from this Page”Change the existing message “This text is generated from uncorrected OCR” to “This text is generated from uncorrected OCR and as such, may contain, inconsistencies with the actual content of the original page.”Finding Illustrations and Multiple Bound ObjectsSummary IssuesFinding illustrations brought a lot of frustration for users. Users are frustrated by visibility of page metadata in BHL-Australia.In the BHL-US/UK, page metadata, when present, should be accurate (i.e. not useful when images say “text”).Users said they liked the thumbnails but they also found the page navigation useful as well as the slider from BHL-Australia; they wanted to have available together.There should be a marriage of the image page preview and the page metadata.Thumbnail view in AUS is not obvious enough.Several users looked in the table of contents and indexes for illustrationsSearching across Multiple bound objects had the same issues as illustrations: page metadata could be greatly improved to assist with this and Thumbnail View is useful when pages aren’t articulated.RecommendationsBHL-AustraliaBHL-Australia could provide a way for users to scroll through the page metadata as a whole instead of just page by page (for example, provide visual cues in the slider where the pages of certain type are)BHL-Australia should consider adding the page metadata to the hover menu of each page (particularly useful for the Thumbnail view)EOLSummary IssuesThe BHL-Australia link to EoL is a little bit too subtle and the BHL-US logo is a little bit faint and hard to see. The connection between EOL and BHL sites is not clear.RecommendationsBHL-AustraliaInstead of a link called "EOL" next to the species name on a page consider having a link called "More info" which when hovered over says "For more information on this species see these resources external to BHL” that then provides multiple links such as: [EOL] [Wikispecies], [Catalogue of Life] [uBio] etc.. This way, users will be more aware when they will be leaving the BHL World and the purpose of those links..OverallSummary Issues“Titles” is more explicit that “Book/Journals” in the Search Results page.The general “look and feel” of the BHL-Australia site is preferred.The functionality of the BHL-US/UK site is desired in the BHL-Australia site.RecommendationsBHL-AustraliaConsider giving the Book Viewer the look and field of a popup window on top of the Bibliography (for example, allow for an easy way to Escape (Esc or X)
- New functionality since 2011Home pageFeatured Collections Browse by LanguagesBrowse by ContributorsBrowse by subjectsBrowse by collectionLinks on top right of main page (feedback, exports, members) - could combine these if too clutteredNow Online stats box on main pageRecently Added view (this is not new, but was never in BHL-AU... it is more important now in the context of the browse by Contributor/Language features)Twitter feed integrationBlog integrationDonate/Mailing List buttonsFlickr images on home pageOtherSocial Media (Like/Tweet) buttonsAdvanced search interfaceDOIs added to bibliography page for titles (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/61031)Title variants added to bibliography page for titles (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/8256)Schema.org markup added to bibliography page for titles (nothing visible to user, just embedded markup)Darwin's Library annotation viewer (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/9707534)Icon at top of each record that allows you to "Add this to your Mendeley library"
- Home pageFeatured Collections Browse by LanguagesBrowse by ContributorsBrowse by subjectsBrowse by collectionLinks on top right of main page (feedback, exports, members) - could combine these if too clutteredNow Online stats box on main pageRecently Added view (this is not new, but was never in BHL-AU... it is more important now in the context of the browse by Contributor/Language features)Twitter feed integrationBlog integrationDonate/Mailing List buttonsFlickr images on home pageOtherSocial Media (Like/Tweet) buttonsAdvanced search interfaceDOIs added to bibliography page for titles (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/61031)Title variants added to bibliography page for titles (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/8256)Schema.org markup added to bibliography page for titles (nothing visible to user, just embedded markup)Darwin's Library annotation viewer (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/9707534)Icon at top of each record that allows you to "Add this to your Mendeley library"
- Future article data model changes- The book viewer should incorporate a way to display a list of articles contained in the book/journal being viewed. Navigate to the start page when picking one from the list.- Need a "landing page" for articles (similar to the bibliography page for titles) to show the article metadata (title, authors, identifiers, names found), links to other instances of the article and a link to the book viewer, an external location (a PDF in another repository), or nothing.- Display Articles that match the search term in a new section of Search results.- Add an option for each Article to "View Record" or "View Article". "View Record" takes the user to the article landing page. "View Article" will link to the book viewer or an external location, as appropriate.- Browse pages should include articles. For example, browsing by a particular subject or author will now show a list of articles related to the subject/author (currently only titles are shown). - Allow users to print an article at the “build-your-own PDF” feature without having to manually select every individual page, but using the article data available.============Now, here is the planned new functionality that is not yet in the BHL-US interface. Much of the following revolves around articles, but also incorporates chapters and sections, as well as individual citations. As a whole, we are referring to these as Segments. None of the following is completely settled, and really only exists in the heads of BHL-US staff (so no wireframes, sorry).The book viewer should incorporate a way to display a list of segments contained in the book/journal being viewed. Picking a segment from the list will navigate to the start page for the segment.We will need a "landing page" for a segment, similar to the bibliography page for titles (example: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/1000). This page will show the segment metadata, including title, authors, identifiers (ex. DOI), names found in the segment, and so on. It should also display links to other instances of the segment (for example, if we have more than one segment record for the same article due to contributions from different institutions). It may link to the book viewer, to an external location (a PDF in another repository), or to nothing.Search results should include a new section for displaying segments that match the search term. For each segment, users should have the option to "View Record" or "View Segment". "View Record" takes the user to the segment landing page. "View Segment" will link to the book viewer or an external location, as appropriate.Browse pages should include segments. For example, browsing by a particular subject or author will now show a list of segments related to the subject/author (currently only titles are shown). Undetermined is if titles and segments are mingled in the browse page (differentiated by icons?), or shown in separate sections on the page.Once we have a significant amount of segment data available to us, it is imagined that the build-your-own PDF feature could take advantage of this and allow users to print an article without having to manually select every individual page.
- AU not developing the site further and reassigning staff to other projectsConcentrating in existing functionality, not new one besides planned
- 5. Joel Richard and John Mignault to STL – Oct. 17 – 19.Output: Macaw rounded for BHL Australia needs. 6. Deployment of New Design – Oct. 22 – Dec 31.Output: Designs adapted to BHL US codebase.
- Design Proposal
- Proposed Timeline:1. Design phaseDates: August 6th – August 24.Input: Specifications/descriptions/notes about new features as soon as possible.Outcome: A full suite of designs, that incorporate comments from the 2011 usability survey and incorporating any new features that you have planned or are already building.2. Comment and response phaseDates: August 24 – September 14.Input: Comments to the suites of designsOutcome: Comments and responses to commentsNotes: Simon will be taking a week of leave in early September 3-7 (tentatively).3. Final signDate: 21 September.Output: The full suite of designs signed off by September 21, packaged, files transferred across to MOBOT.4. Simon Sherrin Visit to STLDate: Start work on 1 October 2012 (Monday) for 3 weeks, returning home before 29 October. Possibility of Joel Richard and John Mignault visiting STL near end of Sherrin visit.5. Simone Downey Visit to STL (tentatively, if necessary)Date: On or about October 6-7, for 2 weeks, returning home on or about 19-20 October.
- Citebank is evolving to serve a new and important role as the primary article repository for biodiversity as part of the Global Names Architecture (GNA). GNA is a 2 year innovation proof of concept project funded by NSF that began July 2011. The goal is to bring together the information in thousands of online resources that deal with biodiversity and aid the efforts of taxonomists, nomenclaturalists and managers of biodiversity information. GNA will be a virtual data and service layer that capitalizes on the almost universal use of latinized scientific names that annotate almost all information related to organisms, allowing them to be used as pivot points to cross-link on-line datasets. Citebank’s role in GNA is as a safe harbor citation repository. (i.e. backfiles of reprint collections contributed by users)
- Below I think is the meat of what is expected for CB based on the document attached which Chris gave us sometime back. Our data model is on track to handle articles and treatments. There is a requirement to accept raw text strings and somehow reconcile them (interpreted as parsing and then deduping). Bianca mentioned that the GRIB has been working on this problem for the last 3 years and hasn’t been able to resolve it. Also an automated reconciliation will only go so far – at some point experts have to be brought in to say this citation is same as that citation. Citebank69 is being developed by BHL70, a consortium of the world’s leading natural history libraries andexpanding to include BHL-Europe and BHL-Australia. CiteBank will fulfill the role of the globalrepository for bibliographic citations relating to biodiversity. Taxonomic literature is indexed at fivelevels of granularity: series, volumes, articles, pages, and treatments. Treatments are the statements thatbear on a nomenclatural or taxonomic act in a publication, and are typically part of a volume or article.Digital libraries such as BHL discriminate at the series, volume and page levels. Article- and treatment levelgranularities are most valuable to taxonomists, and their citations reflect this. Citebank will (interalia) be an open environment for sharing and disseminating citations that suit taxonomists. It will accepttext-strings that represent reference citations at all levels of granularity. Coming from multiple sources,these raw citations will not be standardized and CiteBank must provide reconciliation services to mapvariant forms together. In the style of Zotero71, scholars will author bibliographies of organisms ofinterest, share them with other collaborators. Group members will be able to upload correspondingdocuments; though useful for individuals and small groups. Zotero itself is not a solution for the globalreference system proposed, lacking the domain-specific data structure required to describe taxonomicliterature and historical variations. Citebank will create a document submission module to enable users toshare key reference material in compliance with the “safe harbor” principles of the Digital MilleniumCopyright Act (DMCA)72. The citation metadata and associated digital content will be uploaded to theInternet Archive for storage and subsequent distribution to the global BHL community. The Citebankplatform, in early limited release, contains the aggregated bibliographies of BHL, other digital libraries,publishers, institutional repositories, and contributed bibliographies from specialist groups. Citebank isbuilt from the open-source publishing framework Drupal and includes community-authored componentsfor the management of bibliographic citations. These software components were chosen for theirinteroperability with other major biodiversity data management platforms, including the EDIT ScratchPadand EOL LifeDesk environments73,74. Components will exist as mirrors distributed on servers around theworld, with simple but reliable platform-independent synchronization services, and a suite of welldocumentedcore open-source application programming interfaces (APIs), web services and simple userinterfaces. As with the remainder of GNA, CiteBank adopts an open agile development philosophy. Newcomponents will be rapidly prototyped and distributed to project stakeholders for evaluation, review, andongoing iterative development. They will be shared with collaborators and prospective implementers viaexisting code repositories – such as BHL’s repository75; we will keep interested parties informed via useof the Global Names web site61, other blogs76 and will contribute to a technical documentation wiki77.
- These software components were chosen for their interoperability with other major biodiversity data management platforms, including the EDIT ScratchPad and EOL LifeDesk environments.
- RequirementIMPORTING (Administrator)Importer toolMapping toolPreview importAccept or Reject importUndo import Import reportIMPORTING (General User)UploadPreviewAccept or Reject importBulk DeletionImport ReportRECORD CREATION (General User)Creating citations via a formCreate citations via BibTexRECORD EDITING (General User)Editing citations via checkboxRequirementUSER MANAGEMENT (Administrator)User registrationApproval functionDeletion functionUser RolesBROWSE (General User)Able to browse by various facetsCITATION TYPES OAI HARVESTINGTo be able to utilize OAI-PMH as a service providerTo be able to utilize OAI-PMH as a data providerSPECIFICATIONS FOR DATA PROVIDERS PAGENeed a page to be able to host 2 documents: data specifications via manual upload and data specifications via OAI uploadCONTRIBUTORS PAGENeed a page that lists all citation contributors both by provider name and by collection REPORTING Need a statistics page Recent uploadsGLOBAL UPDATES (Administrator)Admin needs to be able to do global updates on all fields for citationsRELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTENT FILES AN D CITATIONS Needs to support 1:M relationships FIELDSAuthor We will need to rethink the browse by contributor and browse by collection pages in the portal. For example how do the current Citebank contributors fit in with BHL member contributors and other contributors?
- Missouri Botanical Garden has received $260,000 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to identify and describe natural history illustrations from the digitized books and journals in the online Biodiversity Heritage Library. The Art of Life project will develop software tools for automated identification and description of visual resources contained within the more than 100,000 volumes and 38 million pages of core historic literature made available through BHL digitization activities.Contained within BHL’s digitized texts are millions of visual resources (plates, illustrations, figures, maps, and other images), many of which were produced by the finest botanical and zoological illustrators in the world, including the likes of John James Audubon, Georg Dionysus Ehret, and Pierre Redouté. These images are currently minimally described at a structural page level, enabling citation resolvers and human users to navigate to illustrations by page numbers, but the images lack sufficient descriptive metadata to enable dynamic filtering and inquiry based on factors like image type, color content, subject matter, or even names of the organisms depicted in the images.Project funding will help automate the manual processes taken by BHL staff to curate the images delivered via Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/. BHL technical staff at Missouri Botanical Garden will build new software tools and augment existing electronic publishing frameworks to run across the BHL corpus and identify the visual resources within, thereby ensuring these images are not only more useful to the current audience of scholars who consult BHL on a regular basis, and discoverable by new audiences, but also better interconnected with related materials across the Web, including the Encyclopedia of Life. Scholars and educators who rely heavily on visual resources in their research and teaching (e.g. biologists, art historians, curators, historians of science) will be able to find and view a wealth of illustrations of plant and animal life from which to make connections between science, art, culture, and history.
- To realize the vision of a comprehensive and interactive repository for visual resources describing the world’s biota, the project team aims to achieve five primary objectives over the course of a two-year period:Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data;Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource;Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources;Objective 4: Integrate the Wikimedia Commons platform and Flickr APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means;Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons.
- To realize the vision of a comprehensive and interactive repository for visual resources describing the world’s biota, the project team aims to achieve five primary objectives over the course of a two-year period:Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data;Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource;Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources;Objective 4: Integrate the Wikimedia Commons platform and Flickr APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means;Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons.
- The NEH-funded Art of Life project has set out to solve this problem both by developing an algorithm to automatically identify which pages contain illustrations and by creating a schema to further classify and guide the description of the illustrations so as to increase their accessibility to users. Once the algorithm tags pages containing illustrations, they will be pushed out to image-sharing platforms such as Flickr and Wikimedia Commons for crowdsourcing of the descriptions. The schema will provide guidance on the recording of fields and their values. (see an example of a BHL illustration marked up with the Art of Life schema in this screen)A draft of the schema has been developed for the cataloging and description of natural history illustrations to serve the needs of five primary audiences that we believe would benefit from access to these illustrations: 1) Artists, 2) Biologists, 3) Humanities Scholars, 4) Librarians, and 5) Educators.
- To realize the vision of a comprehensive and interactive repository for visual resources describing the world’s biota, the project team aims to achieve five primary objectives over the course of a two-year period:Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations, enabling capture of comprehensive scientific, thematic, and descriptive data;Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus using various files and characteristics to determine location and placement of any type of visual resource;Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources;Objective 4: Integrate the Wikimedia Commons platform and Flickr APIs to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations identified through automated means;Objective 5: Commit born-digital descriptive metadata generated by users into BHL’s preservation system, based on Fedora Commons.