in the words of our field naturalists: an adventure in digitisation and transcription
TRANSCRIPT
In the words of our field naturalists: an adventure in digitisation & transcription
Nicole KearneyMuseum Victoria
@nicolekearney
Dr Elycia Wallis
Museum Victoria
@elyw
Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)
The world’s
largest online
repository for
biodiversity
heritage and
archival materials.
www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Our users
Total annual visits = 1,806,846
Total views = 64,446,442
Total unique visitors = 1,015,491
Twitter followers = 7,355
Facebook followers = 12,911
Flickr followers = 8,158
(Data from BHL Annual Report FY15 0ct 2014-Sept 2015)
Australian visits = 55,301
Our online community
Information on 150 million species
The Naturalist's Miscellany, or Coloured figures
Of natural objects, Vol. 10, George Shaw, 1799.
The first published illustration of the Duck-billed Platypus
“Of all the Mammalia yet
known it seems the most extraordinary…
…at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means.”
BHL-Australia
Total BHL-Au uploads: 623 items (148,762 pages)
A synopsis of the Birds of Australia and the adjacent islands, John Gould, 1837.
Online = infinitely more accessible
What’s in the box?
Ornithology
Department
Archives
“Estate of
Graham Brown
– note books”
Catalogued in our Records & Archives database (TRIM)
Why are field diaries so important?
Field diaries
are full of
DATA
anim
alsplants
fossil
s
weath
er
habita
ts
DATE: 26 September 1948
OBSERVATIONS
LOCATION:Lake Corangamite
DATE: 26 September 1948
OBSERVATIONS
LOCATION:Lake Corangamite
BEHAVIOUR: nesting
SILVER GULLS (26.9.48)
300 nests on 1 island
15 islands of similar size
Estimates 4500 nests
Nesting success~ 1.5 eggs/nest
=7000 new gulls from this year from this locality
Underutilised resource
Inaccessible in their current state
• single hard copy
• single location
• hand-written (in the field)
• historic scripts
• unsearchable
• uncatalogued
Documentation?
Management?
Preservation?
Standards of practice?
Access?
Procedures?
We need this data!
2012 2014
Grampians National Park
Images: Heath Warwick & Nicole Kearney / Museum Victoria
Historic observations
• past species’ abundance and distribution
• future biological surveys
• threatened species management
1931
A historic baseline for climate change research
?
Step 1:
create individual records
A record for every item
Step 2:
create digital versions
Digitisation & post processing
A digital version in our database
OCR from a page of Graham Brown’s diary
l>^v-^wAl^ livU*^/) Curiae '^tila'* -u^vttcvi Lsefei cit^:< Lv. 1^ Ol^Vm?iJcw , L>w i^-^Otv^ dS^^iL* ll^^Uk^ M/tTM^li?'^ tvc4fi>r '^^-^ G^WtY^^ uve^v. llCCUvlr]^vv\l^ '^L^>u^ l^t^
You can’t search handwriting
Step 3:
transcription
Step 3: select a transcription tool
How to attract online volunteers?
http://volunteer.ala.org.au
Forums build online communities
http://volunteer.ala.org.au
Ready for display?
17.
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
DigiVol export
Extracted transcript in Word
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Converted & reformatted
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Ready for display!
Transcript in our database
Step 4:
make them accessible
Add the metadata
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Add the metadata
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Add the metadata
Upload into Internet Archive
archive.org
Final destination: BHL
www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Along with the transcriptions!
www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Progress thus far…
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
42 field diaries digitised
22 diaries transcribed
= 4500 pages of handwritten entries
98 crowd-sourced volunteers
New homes for our field diaries
… in our Scientific Art & Observation Collection.
But what about the data?
Data – science
5 Graham Brown field diaries:
Date Species Location
09/09/1947 Red Wattle bird Colac, near lake, in flowering gums
13/09/1947 Crested Grebes Colac East, end of Church St, mouth
of the creek
13/09/1947 Little Pied Cormorant Colac, perched on the wreck
13/09/1947 Mountain Duck Colac East, end of Church St, mouth
of the creek
13/09/1947 Musk Duck Colac, on the lake
13/09/1947 Silver Gull Colac, over the lake, opposite
Queen's Avenue
5611 animal sightings
Data – history
547 mentions
of people &
organisations
Historical
descriptions
of places & events
Personal anecdotes:
the life of a 1940s
country doctor
23 October 1950
At Gundagai the Murrumbidgee was flooded…
…small eucalypts that had been planted and were growing to cover the hillside below the memorial…
…the afternoon was tiring for the road was bad.
People are using the data!
A final word about
online volunteers
Who are these online volunteers?
Supporting online volunteers
• Clear online tutorials
• Online forums
Barongarook
Irrewillipe
Porepunkah
Warracknabeal
• Email support & feedback
• People & place name index
• Personal acknowledgement
Rewarding online volunteers
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Slide credit: Paul Flemons, DigiVol Volunteer Survey, April 2015
BHL-Australia: partner organisations
• Museum Victoria (lead)
• Australian Museum
• Queensland Museum
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Vic
• South Australian Museum
• (Western Australian Museum)
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/bhlau
