BHL & The Catalogue of Life. Martin R. Kalfatovic. Catalogue of Life Plus Symposium. Champaign, IL. 21 March 2019.

1. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature
Catalogue of Life Global Team &
Species 2000 Meeting
Martin R. Kalfatovic
@UDCMRK & @BHLProgDirector
21 March 2019 | Champaign, IL
Share your thoughts on social media using #BHLib
BHL &The Catalogue of Life

2. Inspiring Discovery through Free Access
to Biodiversity Knowledge
13+ 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.

3. BHL is a Global Consortium
20MEMBERS
AS OF JANUARY 2019
22AFFILIATES
80+ WORLDWIDE PARTNERS

4. Secretariat
BHL GOVERNANCE
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Martin R. Kalfatovic
Program Manager
YOUR NAME HERE
Collections
Manager
Bianca Crowley
Outreach &
Communication
Manager
Grace Costantino

5. Technical Advisory Group
BHL GOVERNANCE
Martin R. Kalfatovic
BHL Program Director
Your Name Here
BHL Program Manager
Mike Lichtenberg
BHL Developer
Joel Richard
Smithsonian Libraries
Susan Lynch
The New York
Botanical Garden

6. 56+ MILLION
PAGES
TITLES VOLUMES
147,000+ 241,000+
188+ MILLIONINSTANCES OF TAXONOMIC NAMES
790+IN-COPYRIGHT TITLES LICENSED FOR BHL
AGREEMENTS
WITH 350+LICENSORS
*Stats as of 17 March 2019

7. 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. NAME FINDING
Name Strings
188,147,990
Show Unique Name Strings
30,128,831
The number of unique name
strings.
Show Verified Name Strings
9,972,029
The number of unique and
verified name strings. A
verified name is one that has
been resolved against a name
authority (NameBank,
Catalogue of Life, etc).

9. NAME FINDING
Biodiversity Heritage Library uses Global
Names Architecture's Global Names
Recognition and Discovery (GNRD), a
taxonomic name recognition algorithm, to
search through all of the texts digitized in
BHL and extract the scientific names.
Searching for a name will return a list of
all the individual pages where that name
occurs.

10. Top Name Searches
/name/Ornithorhynchus_anatinus: 2,717 (0.07%)
/name/Canis_lupus_familiaris: 1,723 (0.04%)
/name/Acinonyx_jubatus: 1,624 (0.04%)
/name/Raphanus_sativus: 1,425 (0.04%)
/name/Ursus_maritimus: 1,359 (0.03%)

11. Ornithorhynchus anatinus

12. Species Bibliographies
Click on Link to
View Page
View Taxonomy Source
Information

13. Anatomy of a BHL Book
Social Media Tools
Taxonomic Name
Recognition
Search Inside
Download Options

14. Ornithorhynchus anatinus

15. OCR for The naturalist's
miscellany
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i k
■ ■ !
H^i-^gy, : t"-;("^: ■ .?;■{ ;iy; ;
£lf -: t;
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-, : ■■■■':■ ■■:'.!■:.::

16. CUSTOM PDF
DOWNLOADS
802,000+
TO DATE
ARTICLE
INDEXING
273,000+
TO DATE
DOI
ASSIGNMENT
135,000+
TO DATE
BHL offers a range of free services
API &
DATA
EXPORTS
TAXONOMIC
NAME
SEARCHING
REFERENCE
MANAGEMENT
TOOLS
*Stats as of January 2019

17. BHL Name Related APIs
GetPageNames. Return a list of names that appear on a page.
GetPartNames. Return a list of scientific names associated with a part.
NameCount. Return the number of unique names found on pages in BHL. Names
both with and without NameBank identifiers are counted.
NameList. List the unique names. By using the startrow and batchsize parameters
appropriately, you can pull the list all at once, or in batches (i.e. 1000 names at a
time). Names both with and without NameBank identifiers are returned.
NameGetDetail. Get basic title, item, and page metadata for each page on which the
specified name appears.
NameSearch. Search for a particular name. Names both with and without NameBank
identifiers are returned.
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/api2/docs/docs.html

18. 8+ MILLION
TOTAL USERS TO DATE
AVERAGE MONTHLY
USERS117,000+
15+ MILLION
TOTAL WEBSITE VISITS TO DATE
AVERAGE MONTHLY
VISITS206,000+
VISITS FROM
243COUNTRIES &
TERRITORIES
*Stats as of January 2019

19. NAME CONSUMERS

20. NAME CONSUMERS

21. Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
0
10000000
20000000
30000000
40000000
50000000
60000000
BHL Names by Year

22. New Service: Full Text Search!
Search across the text of all 54+ million pages in BHL!
Search results display hits for search terms within both
the bibliographic information + the full text of books in BHL.
Filter search results by content type, publication date, subject,
language, and author with new faceted browsing.
Use “search inside” to search for terms within a book you
are viewing.

23. • Where to link BHL
Names ...
BHL DESIDERATUM

24. • Synonym searching
• Classification Browsing/
Searching
• Rectifying unverified
name strings
• Better OCR
• And …
BHL DESIDERATUM

25. “BHL is radically changing the status quo
and democratizing access to knowledge
about biodiversity. Now anyone in the world
has instant access to the original species
description in a couple of clicks.”
Dr. John Sullivan
Evolutionary Biologist
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia
Cornell University

26. SPECIES NAMED IN HONOR OF BHL
Vargapupa biheli
“We may think it is natural to have old literature
online, but if we didn't, we would have serious
trouble finding the relevant publications. Therefore
I thought BHL definitely deserves a new species
named after it for the help it provided.”
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3937.1.1
Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely

27. Thank You!
Questions?
Martin R. Kalfatovic
21 March 2019 | Champaign, IL
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