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Biodiversity Heritage Library, an effective local-global collaboration. The perspective from Woods Hole.
The document discusses a local-global collaboration project related to the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), highlighting its timeline and the role of the MBLWHOI library in digitizing and sharing scientific literature. It outlines the funding sources and partner institutions involved in this initiative, as well as the development of tools for digitized natural history illustrations. Additionally, it stresses the importance of making historical content more accessible and discoverable for researchers and educators.
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Biodiversity Heritage Library, an effective local-global collaboration. The perspective from Woods Hole.
- 1. ©2015 MBLWHOI Librarywww.mblwhoilibrary.org Biodiversity Heritage Library An effective local-global collaboration Library Lunchtime Discussion, May 28, 2015, Smith Conference Room Ellen Levy and Matthew Person
- 2. Is the science literatureyou are looking for available online? Is it freely available? What about pre/post 1923 IN/OUT of copyright content? questions library directors were asking themselves in the first years of the 21st Century
- 4. BHL Early Timeline 2003– (Colorado), Encyclopedia of Life meeting Feb. 2005- Library and Laboratory: the marriage of research, data, and the taxonomic community (London) May 2005 (Washington DC), groundwork for BHL laid June 2006. (DC) Organizational Technical meeting Oct. 2006 (St Louis/San Francisco) Tech meetings Feb 2007 (Cambridge MA) Organizational Meeting May 2007 (ONLINE!) EOL and BHL Launch Summer 2007(WOODS HOLE) MBLWHOI Library begins scanning Fall 2007 First nuts and bolts staff meeting St. Louis Feb 2008 Launch of EOL species pages linked to BHL literature
- 5. • The originalfunding for BHL came via the Encyclopedia of Life through a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (2007-2013). • The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation • The Richard Lounsbery Foundation • Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) • JRS Biodiversity Foundation • National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) • National Science Foundation (NSF) • American Entomological Society
- 8. • American Museumof Natural History • Cornell University Library • Harvard Botany Library • MCZ Harvard, Ernst Mayr Library • Field Museum of Natural History • University of Illinois • Library of Congress • MBLWHOI Library • Missouri Botanical Garden • National Library Singapore • Natural History Museum London • New York Botanical Garden • Royal Botanic Garden Kew • Smithsonian Institution Libraries • USGS • CONABIO – Mexico Biodiversity Commission BHL Partner Institutions
- 10. ©2015 MBLWHOI Librarywww.mblwhoilibrary.org • How did the MBLWHOI Library become a part of this impressive project?
- 11. ©2015 MBLWHOI Librarywww.mblwhoilibrary.org
- 12. If you aregoing to build a legacy online library collection, you need to be able to contribute content from a legacy physical library collection which our more than century old library stacks is built of …
- 13. A local –global collaboration • Insight • Understanding of Sustainability • Local- global Vision • Technical expertise • Cutting edge informatics tools • Global smarts • Local smarts • Service to Woods Hole scientist base
- 14. Work identical towhat was taking place here at MBLWHOI was taking place at our partner libraries – this 2010 photo from the 1st Global BHL Meeting, Smith Conference Room
- 15. Our MBLWHOI BHLStaff, involved in both the stacks processing portion of the project, provided in the early years a lot of nuts and bolts hands on work, as well as project development work such as bringing content we scanned from the BHL website into our local library catalog, which my colleague Ellen will speak of shortly.
- 16. Processing Transporting to Boston Scanning at BPLby IA Returned to MBLWHOI, QA/QC ADDED to LOCAL Catalog
- 28. The Art ofLife: • This project seeks to liberate natural history illustrations from the digitized books and journals in the online Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) through development of software tools for automated identification and description of visual resources.
- 32. FLICKR TAGGING EVENTAT SMITHSONIAN
- 35.
- 36. From: Neil A.Harriman I just want to say THANK YOU. Your site is of the greatest value to people like me who aren't fortunate enough to have access to major research libraries. I cannot even begin to imagine the effort and intelligence that has gone into creating these pages electronically. I am deeply grateful.
- 37. E-mail Sent by: MaryMalloy, Sea Education Association February 18, 2008 Dear Diane, That's it! Many thanks. I am so happy to finally have a copy of this book that I can print out and use with students. I really appreciate your help on this and look forward to getting back to the rare books room. All the best, Mary
- 38. Possible local project:A patron recently pointed out to us that abstracts from the MBL annual report, published for many years in the Biological Bulletin were never indexed –in the same way as other article content – leaving this abstract content difficult to discover. We could article-ize this content in the BHL to make the abstracts discoverable.
- 39. ©2015 MBLWHOI Librarywww.mblwhoilibrary.org THANK YOU!- QUESTIONS? Library Lunchtime Discussion, May 28, 2015, Smith Conference Room Ellen Levy and Matthew Person
Editor's Notes
- #2 Ellen and I welcome you to this brief discussion about the BHL - We’ll have time for questions afterwards, but do feel free to ask anything as it comes up.
- #3 In the early 21st century No LIBRARIES WERE IMMUNE FROM SHRINKING BUDGETS LOSS OF PHYSICAL LIBRARY SPACE The SHIFT FROM PRINT TO ELECTRONIC RESOURCES. The there was a project sponsored by google in which they WENT AROUND in a major project TO UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES NATIONWIDE – SCANNING literally ENTIRE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES… - HOW RELIABLE was for example, large amounts of simply scanned materials? ONCE THIS scanning WAS DONE, did a library need all of it’s physical collections anymore? - WAS ANY PDF OF A SCIENCE ARTICLE becoming THE PDF of record for seeking THAT CONTENT? ALL IMPORTANT ELEMENTS AND GOOD QUESTIONS…
- #4 THE VISION OF what BHL could be SOUGHT TO APPLY THE TECHNOLOGY OF THE DAY TO digitize elements of THE TRADITIONAL LIBRARY - TO ENHANCE AND ADD technical POWER TO originally in print SCIENCE LITERATURE That WAS NOT PRESENT IN THE THE ORIGINAL PAPER VERSIONS
- #5 THE INCEPTION AND LAUNCH OF THE BHL WAS CLOSELY LINKED TO THE LAUNCH OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE (EOL was Edward O Wilson’s dream project to create one website per known species in the world – much of the tech side of this project took place at MBL) THE INCEPTION AND LAUNCH OF THE BHL WAS CLOSELY LINKED TO THE LAUNCH OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE AND BHL ALSO WAS CLOSELY ALIGNED WITH THE TAXONOMIC COMMUNITY, WHICH WAS VERY INTERESTED IN USING DIGITIZATION OF TEXTS, AND TEXT MINING, AND tools like SOFTWARE developed at MBL CALLED UBIO, WHICH produced all the possible names for a single organism which when applied to scanned literature TO SPEED UP THE PAINSTAKINGLY TEDIOUS WORK OF manually reading THE CORPUS OF LEGACY BIODIVERSITY LITERATURE WHEN STUDYING ANY GIVEN ORGANISM. Another partner, our scanning partner and provider was THE INTERNET ARCHIVE, A NON PROFIT ORGANIZATION Based IN SAN FRANCISCO AND DEDICATED TO ARCHIVING THE WEB, and books and almost any media, among other things… BY 2007 IA HAD DEVELOPED SCANNING EQUIPMENT WHICH LOWERED THE COST OF SCANNING A BOOK TO TEN CENTS A PAGE… So it was the confluence of needs aligned with the technology to satisfy those needs which came together as BHL came into existence….
- #6 Just to mention with thanks our major funding sources…
- #7 Here is the example of MBL’s Biological Bulletin, from our stacks, having been digitized, and now is also accessible through the Biodiversity Heritage Library
- #8 THESE GOALS ARE A WORKING MODEL BHL FOLLOWS: Build and maintain the BHL as the largest reliable, reputable, and responsive repository of biodiversity literature and archival materials. Develop services and tools which facilitate discovery and improve research efficiency of BHL content. Increase global awareness about the BHL and biodiversity issues through outreach, learning and education, branding, and collaboration with existing and new user communities. Grow BHL consortia membership and partnerships while fostering cross-institutional collaboration that continues to serve as a model for digital library development. Increase our success through financial strength, effective administrative support, and organizational excellence.
- #9 Interesting fact: prior to the digital age, the MBLWHOI Library already held decades old “exchange” relationships with most of the above libraries.
- #13 If you are going to build a legacy online library collection, you need to be able to contribute content from a legacy physical library collection which our more than century old library stacks is built of …
- #14 OUR LATE FORMER LIBRARY DIRECTOR CATHY NORTON INSPIRED THE STAFF OF THE BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY THROUGH AN ACTUALY CLARION CALL TO ACTION, TO GET THE NUTS AND BOLTS GOING IN THE PRODUCTION OF DIGITAL CONTENT AT the start of this project …SHE USED TO SAY IN RESPONSE TO THOSE WHO might SPEND MONTHS AND months PLANNING A PROJECT: she’d rally: FIRE! AIM! READY! FIRE, AIM, READY (IN THIS CASE) WAS A GREAT WAY TO GET A PROJECT OFF THE GROUND, BECAUSE WHAT IT PLANNED FOR WAS THAT EVERYTHING WOULD NOT BE PLANNED FOR, AND THEREFORE THE PROCESS OF MAKING THE PROJECT TAKE PLACE WAS INTENSELY DYNAMIC, BECAUSE STAFF MEMBERS ACROSS THE US AND IN THE UK HAD TO COMMNUNICATE OFTEN WITH EACH OTHER TO ENSURE THAT THE GOALS OF THE PROJECT WERE BEING MET AND THAT THE METHODOLOGIES USED TO MAKE THE PROJECT HAPPEN MADE SENSE – if there were issues they were worked out on a staff wiki, where everyone could offer their opinions and expertise. CATHY ALSO HAD THE INSIGHT, THE LOCAL-GLOBAL VISION, THE TECHNICAL EXPERTISE, AND SHE SUPPORTED THE DEVELOPMENT of CUTTING EDGE INFORMATICS TOOLS AND PROJECTS, AND ENCOURAGED STAFF MEMBERS LIKE DAVE REMSEN, IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIS TOOL, UBIO, THE TAXONOMIC NAME SERVER, WHICH DISAMBIGUATES THE SOMETIMES MANY DIFFERENT NAMES OF A SINGLE ORGANISM… WHICH WHEN APPLIED TO THE TEXT IN DIGITIZED BOOKS AND JOURNALS COULD SERVE THE TAXONOMIC COMMUNITY OF SCIENTISTS by GREATLY REDUCING THE TIME THEY SPEND REVIEWING HUNDREDS OF YEARS WORTH OF SCIENCE LITERATURE, INTO A FEW CLICKS VIA BHL - CATHY ALSO TRAINED HER LIBRARY STAFF TO LEARN HOW TO PROVIDE THE FACILITATING SKILLS TO MAKE SUCH PROJECTS HAPPEN.
- #15 Work identical to what was taking place here at MBLWHOI was taking place at our partner libraries – this 2010 photo from the 1st Global BHL Meeting, Smith Conference Room
- #16 Our MBLWHOI BHL Staff, involved in both the stacks nuts and bolts processing portion of the project, as well as project development work, such as bringing content we scanned from the BHL website into our local library catalog, which my colleague Ellen will speak of shortly.
- #17 Going clockwise from the upper left hand corner YOU SEE THE TYPE OF HANDS ON IN THE STACKS PROCESSING PER VOLUME WHICH WE DID … FOLLOWED BY PACKING UP AND TRANSPORTING THE VOLUMES VIA TRUCK TO BOSTON….WHERE THEY WERE SCANNED AT THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY…AND REPACKED, SENT BACK TO OUR LIBRARY, WHERE WE COMPARED PAGE BY PAGE THE PAPER VOLUMES WITH THE DIGITAL FILES …AND RETURNED TO BOSTON SCANNING CENTER ANY VOLUMES WHICH REQUIRED RESCANNING….NOW ELLEN WILL SPEAK A LITTLE about HOW THE DIGITAL FILES CREATED BY THE SCANNING PROCESS WERE INTRODUCED INTO OUR LOCAL LIBRARY CATALOG.
- #18 Before the books leave to be scanned, metadata is entered on a spreadsheet that accompanies the shipment. After the books are scanned each one is given a BHL Archive ID. These IDs are then added to the standard BHL format template to create a web link in our catalog.
- #19 There are a number of ways to look at full text Journals and books that have been scanned and deposited into BHL. One way is searching from the MBLWHOI Library homepage. Either for a journal or a book, a link will provided on the results page, if it has been scanned.
- #20 If the item has been scanned, the holdings information will display a link to the BHL.
- #21 An intermediate page was developed by the MBLWHOI Library for multi-volume journal titles. Just click on the volume you choose.
- #22 These links take you to the exact volume. This volume is volume 79 of the Biological Bulletin. You can scroll through pages on the right, or select specific pages in the upper left. Another feature that adds value to the text is a listing in the lower left of any scientific names that exist on that page. This taxonomic name finding software was created by uBio and the Global Names Project. Both of these projects took place at MBL. Each scientific name is linked to a bibliography of other volumes in the BHL that contain this name. The full text of the volume can be downloaded.
- #23 Selecting a scientific name on the previous screen will display a bibliography for Fundulus. You can then select to search the title, the specific volume in general, or just view the page without leaving the list.
- #24 When the last column “VIEW” is selected for one of these titles, the page that contains the name is displayed. You can see how valuable this tool can be for scientists who work with scientific names.
- #25 Back at the BHL search page or homepage volumes can also be browsed and selected by contributor through an A-Z listing. Statistics for the contributor shows the number of added volumes, titles and pages, and the A-Z listing of all it’s titles. The MBLWHOI Library has added over 12,000 volumes from over 4600 titles containing almost 5 million pages. Now Matt will continue our tour of the BHL.
- #26 Search, Donation button Blog, which has stories written about different aspects of BHL, for example I am now working on a story for the blog about the WHOI publication Oceanus to appear in conjunction with World Oceans Day in a couple of weeks. Flickr, Featured collection About Feedback
- #27 “About” takes you to an extensive public website with help sections, membership information, technical, and copyright and usage details among many of the sections available.
- #28 FEEDBACK takes you to a form, which can also be accessed from any page… when you are viewing content – if you have any issue or notice a problem with the page you are on, when you fill out and submit this form the issue goes to a triage librarian at the Smithsonian Libraries – and into a issue resolving system called Gemini, which sends the issue to the library which originally scanned the content – which will then resolve the issue. THIS FORM IS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF THE BHL FOR BHL STAFF LIBRARIANS. IT IS WHERE WE CAN APPLY EXCELLENCE TO THIS COLLECTION.
- #29 We may have originally thought that the act of building a digital library is the final result of building the BHL. What we did not anticipate in 2007 is the large role, for example social media would play in both promoting the project AND EDUCATING THE PUBLIC ABOUT SCIENCE. THE SOCIAL MEDIA ALSO BECAME A tool, to resolve technical issues – for example: The Art of Life is a National Endowment for the Humanities funded BHL project, the goal of which is to extract, classify, describe and share images and illustrations which are significant part of BHL content. Part of this project has been to use the photo website flickr to display illustrations from BHL content , and use this SOCIAL MEDIA tool to add metadata about the images, and in many instances, once metadata has been created the images are then uploaded to the Encyclopedia of Life.
- #30 SO, WE TAKE A VOLUME From our stacks
- #31 And have it scanned to become content within the BHL…in this instance, the book is the Field Book of Giant Fishes
- #32 Images such as this one are extracted from BHL and uploaded to flickr, where metadata tagging takes place through public crowd sourcing events and more automatic methods are being developed.
- #33 This was an event at the Smithsonian Library a couple of years ago where volunteers added metadata to BHL images in flickr – this type of event informed the development of automated tagging methods.
- #34 And once the image is fully tagged it is then uploaded to become a part of the Encyclopedia of Life website – The image from a volume in our library stacks can now be viewed by anyone, anywhere, on a computer device.
- #35 To show you how powerful this social media can be, By the end of 2014 – the images BHL had uploaded to flickr had received a total of 27 million visits.
- #36 This is a screenshot of a game called BEANSTALK The Purposeful Gaming Project has transformed what might be in another project - years spent correcting the errors in optical character recognition text … which would be perhaps, someone working for a long time with endless spreadsheets …and this game haS transformed that process into a game children can play, In which unvalidated OCR text from the BHL is flashed on the screen in front of them, and by typing the text into a window the text is being validated, and whatever the issue needing to be resolved is resolved. Because this is a GAME, each time a user completes the confirmation of text, the beanstalk grows and the user gets points. Years ago there might have been money available to hire staff to do a project like this, nowadays by inviting citizen scientists (and their kids) into projects like this, technical work can be deconstructed into a set of tasks, which are then plugged into a gaming format , and the work can be successfully accomplished. ASKING MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC TO ASSIST WITH THIS TYPE OF WORK IS Known as crowd sourcing, this technique is used more often in Woods Hole, recently we saw Ken Beussler of WHOI employ crowd sourcing in his work to track Fukushima radioactivity in the Pacific Northwest.
- #37 To start to wrap up this brief introduction to BHL, these are a few testimonials people have sent to us over the years.