The document summarizes Jane Smith's presentation at the ALA Conference on the Natural History Museum Library, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), and BHL Europe. Some key points include: - The Natural History Museum Library has a large collection of over 1 million books and 25,000 serials covering biodiversity and receives many scientific visitors each year. - BHL scans publications to make them openly accessible online. The Natural History Museum has scanned over 2 million pages for BHL, including Darwin material. - BHL Europe receives EU funding and aims to provide multilingual access to biodiversity literature through partnerships across Europe.

1. Jane Smith, NHM Library Biodiversity Heritage Library - News from Europe BHL Update 28 June 2010 ALA Conference 2010

2. Talk this morning Natural History Museum and NHM Library Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) Colleagues here will cover in detail BHL-Europe JISC/NEH Darwin’s Library Project Opportunities and Challenges

3. So I don’t forget Sharing work carried out by many colleagues Team at the NHM BHL-E colleagues Special Project Partners BHL colleagues here in US Also, in case I forget, theme – partnerships are good

4. Natural History Museum Nearly 4 Million visitors 5,000 scientific visitors 20,000 hours Research Institute – 350 scientists based at the Museum over 70 million specimens 7 science departments

5. NHM Library Modern and historical International coverage of most aspects of biodiversity and geodiversity Extensive coverage of taxonomy and systematics > 1million books 25,000 serials Growing digital >500,000 artworks on paper manuscripts

6. Users Scientific researchers Biodiversity & Geodiversity Internal / external / citizen scientists Researchers in arts, humanities and social sciences Public

7. Funding State funding – core activities Fund raising - sponsorship and donations External project funding UK and EU Non-government grants Partnerships

8. NHM Digitisation BHL scanning Journals and books Boutique scanning More expensive Rare / Artworks/ Manuscripts Funding Internal External grants Development project funding Collaborations

9. BHL scanning at NHM Internet Archive Single scribe Foldouts bench Average 3,500 page per shift per day Museum titles Rare/specialist General Researcher requests Darwin Over 2 million pages

10. Solution for tackling foldouts

11. Scanning artwork - Example, World Collections Programme funded project UK and India

12. Additional projects Recent focus on Darwin Material by and about Darwin Darwin’s Library Project JISC/NEH joint funding Digitise content used by Darwin Annotated pages Wallace from July 2010 Scanning for others Adding to other projects BHL, Darwin online, Aluka, Europeana

13. Scanning the Darwin Collection Test scanning a page from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

15. BHL Europe Co-funding from the European Commission programme eContent plus Funding for three years – 3.4 Million Euros Europeana – the cultural website governed by EDL Foundation Europeana offers search capabilities through millions of digital item provided by Europe’s museums, galleries, libraries & archives

16. BHL Europe: Main principles BHL-Europe is not funded to digitise Funding for digitisiation on National level or alternative funding Best Practice Network Not a research and development project Building solutions with existing (state-of-the-art) technologies

17. Target Audiences Libraries Digital library / Open Access networks Digitisation centres Scientists Citizen Scientists Students Teachers Policy makers Environmental & Conservation agencies Artists Government officials European citizens Researchers in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences

18. BHL and BHL- Europe –shared challenges Growing need for biodiversity literature Analysis of demand indicates that users need an online repository of biodiversity literature (original text content) with a multilingual interface and sophisticated search and filtering functionality Taxonomic impediment to research - the lack of access to the published literature of biodiversity is one of the principal obstacles to efficient and productive research, outreach, and education Most of the biodiversity literature is held in a few libraries making this literature unavailable for wider use by a broad range of potential users (scientists and non-scientists) The cited half-life of publications in taxonomy is longer than in any other scientific discipline (Revisions of taxonomy require seeing all prior literature) Repatriation of knowledge to the developing world

19. Shared aims BHL/BHL-E partners Scanning centres established for mass scanning Some partners also scanning in-house Wish to expand international footprint Mirrored content Ingest content from across the globe

20. BHL Europe Objectives Provide a multilingual access point for the search and retrieval of biodiversity content through EUROPEANA & BHL Review and test approaches for the establishment and management of multilingual biodiversity digital libraries Improve the interoperability of European biodiversity digital libraries by the innovative application of proven technologies (incl. metadata repositories, deduplication tools, workflow systems) Promote the adoption of best practice methods , standards and specifications for the large-scale implementation of such repositories Facilitate the open access (= free of charge) to taxonomic literature for a large number of target users including the general public

21. BHL Europe Objectives cont’ Raise awareness among target users. Develop operational strategies for long-term preservation and sustainability of the data produced by national biodiversity digitisation programmes Facilitate and enable the initiation of scanning initiatives in European countries not yet involved in digitisation programmes and improve the infrastructure for digital libraries in all EU countries Negotiate with Rights Holders for access to in-copyright content

22. Preservation Committed to long-term storage, curation, and preservation of digital text assets for the world-wide biodiversity community BHL acting as a steward for this literature, which is the common heritage of humanity. “Science has no borders.” To keep this content available and open for the future requires careful organizational planning. Preservation is both a technical and political/social process.

23. BHL Partners 13 Countries so far 28 partners and growing Link to other initiatives

24. BHL-Europe Partner

25. BHL-Europe Network BHL-Europe Network Henning Scholz, BHL project Coordinator

26. BHL-Europe Programme O rganisation

27. Second year of three First review in May 2010 (Vienna) Building the German prototype (October 2010) Fully functional GRIB system (de-dublication of library catalogues, bid list, etc.) together with EDIT-Vital by spring 2011 Over 40.000 digitised books will be available in Europeana by the end of the month (BHL, Naturalis, Biology Centre) 50% of BHL-Europe content will be in Europeana by April 2011

28. Questions?

29. Digitising Darwin’s Library

30. The challenge A key source of ‘data’ for Darwin was his library – heavily annotated Annotations published in late 1980s, but full utility requires access to the books they annotate – some quite obscure It would be very costly to digitise his entire library

31. A solution Link transcriptions with digitised books For heavily annotated books – scan whole volume For sparsely annotated books – just scan annotated pages and link in with digital surrogates Store and delivery content with Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), to ensure wide resource discovery and good sustainability

32. The idea A partnership - an initial idea from David Kohn Bringing together Research expertise Collections Existing digitisation programmes Initiatives developing and delivering access to biodiversity and cultural/heritage collections

33. Darwin: “If this were true adios theory” ! Lyell: “The entire variation from the original type... may usually be effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can be obtained by continuing to alter the circumstances, though ever so gradually; indefinite divergence, either in the way of improvement or deterioration, being prevented..." Context is significant

34. Partners Cambridge University Library (CUL) Natural History Museum (NHM) Darwin Manuscript Project at the American Natural History Museum (AMNH) Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) (Technical development at MOBOT) Cambridge University Library

35. Context is significant

36. JISC-NEH Project – just the beginning… This project will enable us to represent just over half of the annotated books in Darwin’s Library – we will fundraise for remainder Darwin also kept notes of books he borrowed (and so couldn’t annotate!). Where these books are available, we will mount transcriptions of notes, enabling us to broaden concept to Darwin’s Reading

37. T he cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without an extensive library. Charles Darwin, et al (1987) Darwin, C.R. ,et al. 1847. Copy of Memorial to the First Lord of the Treasury [Lord John Russell], respecting the Management of the British Museum. Parliamentary Papers, Accounts and Papers 1847, paper nu. (268), Vol. XXXIV.253 (13 April): 1-3. [Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online]

38. Opportunities and Challenges + partnerships + best practices and learning + new thinking about collections and how we work with researchers + how our collections fit with others - Sustainable funding - spaces – digitising so don’t need collection now - range of equipment - COPYRIGHT

39. Thank you - and for more information Jane Smith Natural History Museum Library, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD Email: [email_address] BHL http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org BHL Europe http://www.bhl-europe.eu Europeana http://europeana.eu

40. Questions?