The document discusses the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), an open access digital library focused on taxonomic literature from the 18th century onward. It notes that taxonomic literature has a longer half-life of citation than other scientific disciplines. The BHL aims to digitize over 1.4-1.6 million publications, totaling 280-320 million pages, from its partner institutions to make this literature more accessible online. It has already digitized around 400,000 pre-1923 publications totaling 80 million pages.

1. Biodiversity Heritage Library Tom Garnett Smithsonian Institution Libraries

2. Taxonomic Literature Over 250 years of systematic description of life Systema naturae (10 th ed. 1758) by Carl von Linné

3. Taxonomic Literature The cited half-life of publications in taxonomy is longer than in any other scientific discipline * * * The decay rate is longer than in any scientific discipline - Macro-economic case for open access, Tom Moritz

4. Taxonomic Impediment Specimen collections Databases Publications Observations ‘ Gray’ literature Index cards Field notebooks

5. Taxonomic Literature that there is access to information held in national/regional/global collections that electronic data is efficiently captured and provided in useable form that existing information held in literature and by current experts is made available electronically that stability of scientific names of organisms, used to access this information, is promoted - Darwin Declaration, 1998 The essential requirements for accessing and utilising this global information are:

6. Taxonomic Impediment Biologia Centrali-Americana. Edited by Frederick Ducane Godman and Osbert Salvin. London : Pub. for the editors by R. H. Porter, 1879-1915

7. Digital Divide? Vishwas Chavan travels a lot. An informatician based at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, India, he collects data on what types of animal live where in India to enter into a biodiversity database … Much of the information Chavan seeks is in old, out-of-print tomes … To find them, Chavan has spent years trailing around libraries. He dreams of the day when books such as these are scanned and made available as digital files on the Internet. “ Science in the Web Age: The Real Death of Print” by Andreas von Bubnoff Nature 438, 550-552 1 December 2005

8. Biodiversity Heritage Library 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

9. Biodiversity Heritage Library American Museum of Natural History (New York) Field Museum (Chicago) Natural History Museum (London) Smithsonian Institution (Washington) Missouri Botanical Garden New York Botanical Garden Royal Botanic Garden, Kew Botany Libraries, Harvard University Ernst Meyer Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

10. Biodiversity Heritage Library

11. Core literature pre-1923: 400,000 (80 million pages) All pre-1923: 600-750,000 (120-150 million pages) All literature: 1.4-1.6 million (280-320 million pages) Biodiversity Heritage Library

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21. Internet Archive Scribe Scanner Single Scribe Machine Human operated 200 volumes per shift per week ~ 70,000 pages from a single machine per week

22. Internet Archive Scribe Scanner

23. Internet Archive Scribe Scanner

24. Internet Archive Scribe Scanner

25. Biodiversity Heritage Library

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