Building a Global Library of Taxonomic Literature. XXVIII Congresso Brasileiro de Zoologia. 9 February 2010. Belém, Brazil.

1. Building a Global
Library of
Taxonomic Literature
Martin R. Kalfatovic
Smithsonian Institution Libraries &
Biodiversity Heritage Library
XXVIII Congresso Brasileiro de Zoologia
Biodiversidade e Sustentabilidade

3. Johann Baptist von
Spix
Simiarum et
Vespertilionum
Brasiliensium Species
Novae (1823)
Bavarian Expedition to
Brazil, 1817-1820

5. Education and Outreach
Smithsonian & Harvard
Synthesis Center
Field Museum
Species Pages & Secretariat
Smithsonian
Informatics
Marine Biological Laboratory
Missouri Botanical Garden

6. American Museum of Natural History (New York)
Academy of Natural Sciences Philadelphia
California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco)
Field Museum (Chicago)
Natural History Museum (London)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington)
Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis)
New York Botanical Garden (New York)
Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
Botany Libraries, Harvard University
Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology, Harvard University
Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution

9. How much is there:
Core literature pre-
1923: 100 million
pages (?)
All pre-1923: 120-
150 million pages
All literature: 280-320
million pages

10. Scanning Partner:
Internet Archive
• Northeast Regional
Scanning Facility
(Boston)
• Jersey City Facility
• University of Illinois
• Natural History
Museum, London
• Missouri Botanical
Garden (Non-Scribe
operation)
• Fedscan (Library of
Congress)
• Smithsonian Libraries

11. BHL Members: BHL-
Europe
• Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz-Institut
für Evolutions- und
Biodiversitätsforschung an der
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Natural History Museum, UK
• Narodni muzeum NMP CZ
• Angewandte Informationstechnik
Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
• Freie Universität Berlin FUBBGBM
• Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Stiftung Öffentlichen Rechts
• Naturhistorisches Museum Wien
• Hungarian Natural History Museum
• Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish
Academy of Sciences
• University of Copenhagen

12. BHL Members: BHL-
Europe
• Stichting Nationaal Natuurhistorisch
Museum, Naturalis
• National Botanic Garden of Belgium
• Royal Museum for Central Africa,
• Royal Belgian Institute of Natural
Sciences
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Museum national d’histoire naturelle
• Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientificas
• Università degli Studi di Firenze
• Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
• Species 2000
• John Wiley & Sons limited
• Helsingin yliopisto UH-Viikki

13. BHL China
• Agreement with the
Chinese Academy of
Sciences now in place
• First joint technical meeting
took place in January 2010
• BHL China portal in place

17. Now Online
More than:
40,000 volumes
16 million pages
Only 290 million to go!
Avg. monthly growth rate
1,500 volumes
600,000 pages
See you in 2048!

18. Acquiring other
content ...
Researches scanning
their own work or literature
relevant to their work
Journals that have
scanned their content, but
do not have a robust
platform to host it

19. Biodiversity Heritage Library
Permission Process
Working with non-profit publishers for
sharing with the BHL
To digitize and mount works under
copyright BHL must obtain permission
from the copyright holders.
Many biodiversity journals and
monographs are published by non-profit
institutions or learned societies whose
mission is to promote research and
learning.
Some of these institutions have not sold
their rights to commercial publishers and
are open to sharing with the BHL.

20. So what? Does [fill
in blank] do that?
… and more and
faster?

21. So what? Does [fill
in blank] do that?
… and more and
faster?

22. BHL is all about
OPEN & SHARING

23. An inordinate
fondness for data
Access
Putting biodiversity
literature in the hands of
researchers
Set the data free
Suck it; mash it; broadcast
it
Increase
Reuse, recyle, expand

24. Stats: Usage
• Jan – Sep 2009 • Daily average
– 266,000 visitors – 970 visitors
– 436,000 visits – 1,600 visits / day
– 2.1million – 7,700 pageviews /
pageviews day
Jan – Sep 2009
Launch to 30 Sep 2009

25. Global, coordinated
development
New functionality from BHL-
Europe
Improved storage
Semantic interface
OAIS-compliant preservation
infrastructure
Building a community of
developers
Funded & volunteer
RubyBHL
PyBHL

26. Open Software &
Development
BHL Bits:
Portal code, utilities, services
http://code.google.com/p/bhl-
bits/
Taxonomic Literature
Group
Google Group for discussion of
“taxonomic literature & the
services required to make
literature interoperable within
biodiversity research and
biodiversity informatics.”

27. Services
Names Service
Return all occurrences of a name
throughout BHL digitized corpus
Documentation: http://bit.ly/2e6sg9
Access to 51million name strings using
TaxonFinder
1.4million unique names
Working out a strategy for obscure
species
Algorithm improvements to detect
nomenclatural & taxonomic acts
OpenURL
Facilitate links to citations: protologues,
articles, references
Useful to Nomenclators, Reference
Systems
IPNI
Tropicos

28. Services: OpenURL
Request
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/openurl?
pid=title:3934&volume=3&issue=&spage=262&date=1856
http://www.tropicos.org/Name/1200408

29. Services: OpenURL
Disambiguation
Looking for:
BHL returns:

30. Services: OpenURL
Results

31. Encyclopedia of Life
522,000 species pages linked to BHL
#1 referring site

32. Other Consumers
EarthCape Labs
Sort/Search capabilities with harvested names
YouTube demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw7qw87JTOs
BioGUID
BHL Name Timeline
http://bioguid.info/bhl/
BHL Name Comparison
http://bioguid.info/bhl/compare.php

37. Global BHL
Based on open access
Open content
Collaboration
Shared development

38. 1.9 million known
species … most
described once in a
hard to find article …
wouldn't it be nice to
know more about
your neighbors ...

43. Thanks for sticking
around!

44. Building a Global
Library of
Taxonomic Literature
Martin R. Kalfatovic
Smithsonian Institution Libraries &
Biodiversity Heritage Library
XXVIII Congresso Brasileiro de Zoologia
Biodiversidade e Sustentabilidade