increasing access, promoting progress: empowering global research through the bhl

Martin R. Kalfatovic

Twitter@BHLProgDirectorProgram Director

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Smithsonian Libraries

Increasing Access,

Promoting Progress:

Empowering Global Research

through the BHL

Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature

January 2017| Atlanta

“The cultivation of natural

history cannot be efficiently

carried out without reference to

an extensive library.”

Charles Darwin, et al (1847)

Extensive. Open. Global

Inspiring Discovery through Free Access

to Biodiversity Knowledge

10 years of inspiring discovery

15th

-21st

centuries

through free & open accessto biodiversity literature & archives

from the

Mission

The Biodiversity Heritage Library improves research

methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity

literature openly available to the world as part of a

global biodiversity community.

A global project that encompasses

Libraries ScienceTechnology

Natural history literature and archives contain

information that is critical to studying life on Earth.

SPECIES

DESCRIPTIONS

DISTRIBUTION

RECORDS

HISTORY OF

SCIENTIFIC

DISCOVERY

CLIMATE

RECORDS

INFORMATION

ON EXTINCT

SPECIES

SCIENTIFIC

OBSERVATIONS

ECOSYSTEM

PROFILES

SCIENTIFIC

ILLUSTRATIONS

BHL is a Global Consortium

18MEMBERS

AS OF JANUARY 2017

15AFFILIATES60+ WORLDWIDE PARTNERS

*As of January 2017

MEMBERS

• American Museum of Natural History Library

• BHL Australia

• BHL México

• Cornell University Library

• Field Museum of Natural History Library

• Harvard University Botany Libraries

• Harvard University, Museum of Comparative

Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library

• Library of Congress

• The LuEsther T. Mertz Library, The New York

Botanical Garden

• Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven

Library

• Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle

• National Library Board, Singapore

• Natural History Museum Library, London

• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Library, Art &

Archives

• Smithsonian Libraries

• United States Geological Survey Libraries

Program

• University Library, University of Illinois

Urbana-Champaign

• University of Toronto Libraries

*As of January 2017

AFFILIATES

• Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel

University, Library and Archives

• BHL Africa

• Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire -

Lausanne

• California Academy of Sciences Library

• Canadian Museum of Nature

• Chicago Botanic Garden, Lenhardt Library

• Internet Archive

• Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic

Garden

• Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution Library (MBLWHOI

Library)

• Mendel Museum

• Narodni Museum (National Museum, Prague)

• Natural History Museum Los Angeles County

• Naturalis Biodiversity Center

• Smithsonian Institution Archives

• U.S. Department of Agriculture, National

Agricultural Library

“Last year I threw down the gauntlet to [BHL staff] and asked if

there was any possibility of BHL arranging to have made available

the entire run of the UK periodical The Gardeners' Chronicle. I

asked because there is nowhere in my country of residence

(Denmark) that holds it, requiring that I make time consuming and

expensive research trips to London or Cambridge in the UK should I

wish to examine the periodical. I was amazed and delighted that

BHL has achieved what I asked. This contribution to the BHL

catalogue has been a real boon to my research.”

Dr. Toby MusgraveHorticulturalist & BotanistLecturer, Danish Institute for Study Abroad

BHL Content

50+MILLIONPAGES

TITLES VOLUMES

113,000+ 192,000+

172+MILLIONINSTANCES OF TAXONOMIC NAMES

550+IN-COPYRIGHT TITLES LICENSED FOR BHL

AGREEMENTS

WITH 240+LICENSORS

*Stats as of January 2017

BHL includes all

levels of organismic

organization, from

genes to

ecosystems, as well

as other disciplines

affecting the study

of the biodiversity of

life on earth.

Not just “heritage”

collections

> 23% of BHL's collection of

188,970 items is post-1922

> 72.3% of BHL’s collection is

free of copyright restriction in

the United States

As of August 2016

Systema naturae

per regna tria

naturae.Ed. 10, 1758.

Carl von Linné.

biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/542

___________________

Considered the starting

point of zoological

nomenclature.

Listed about 10,000

species of organisms, of

which about 6,000 are

plants and 4,236 are

animals.

The earliest work in BHL is

Theophrasti De Historia plantarum liber primus

(1483)

biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40913187

Logbook of the

yacht "France"Whitney South Sea

Expedition of the American

Museum of Natural History

Volume: v.2 (1926-1928)


__________________

BHL includes over 100,000

pages of Field Notes and

related archival material.

Ongoing transcription projects

will make these fully

searchable.

Bonn Zoological

Bulletin 61 (1): 135-

39 (July 2012)


___________________

With the assistance of

BioStor, BHL now indexes

over 202,000 articles,

chapters or other “segments”

of BHL content.

These are all searchable

through the bibliographic

interface to BHL.

Scotopteryx kuznetzovi

(Wardikian, 1957)

(Lepidoptera, Geometridae,

Larentiinae),

a new species for the fauna of

Iran and Turkey

Hossein Rajaei Sh.* & Dieter

Stuning

Charles Darwin’s Library

biodiversitylibrary.org/browse/collection/darwi

nlibrary

___________________

A digital edition and virtual

reconstruction of the surviving

books owned by Charles Darwin.

It also provides full transcriptions of

his annotations and marks. These

works provide important insight into

the development of Darwin’s ideas

on evolution and natural selection.

"If this were true, adios theory"

Charles Darwin wrote these words

in response to reading Principles of

Geology, v. 2 (1837) by Charles

Lyell, who was arguing that changes

in species have limitations. Darwin,

on the other hand, argued that

changes in species are infinite and

continuous, an integral concept

crucial to his theory of evolution.

“BHL is a tremendous and extremely valuable

resource. It has done an enormous amount to

enhance the capacity of developing countries

to undertake taxonomic research on their

biota.”

Dr. Dai HerbertMalacologistKwaZulu-Natal Museum, PietermaritzburgUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg

Usage: Macro

2016

198,747 visitors | March 2016

Past 12 Months

2.2m sessions

1.2m visitors

2007

1. London2. Paris3. New York4. Washington5. Mexico City6. Berlin7. Sydney8. Vienna9. Sao Paulo10. Madrid

13.5% sessions

Mobile Sessions FY 2016

9.3% sessions

Mobile Sessions FY 2013

“BHL is a tremendous and extremely valuable

resource. It has done an enormous amount to

enhance the capacity of developing countries

to undertake taxonomic research on their

biota.”

Dr. Dai HerbertMalacologistKwaZulu-Natal Museum, PietermaritzburgUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg

Usage: Institutional

EXPLORING

COLLECTION

IMPACT IN BHL

PAGES VOLUMES

64,600 297CONTRIBUTIONS TO BHL TO DATE

AVERAGE

VIEWS PER

ITEM (IN IA) 358

106,349TOTAL VIEWS/

DOWNLOADS IN

INTERNET ARCHIVE

“BHL is radically changing the status quo

and democratizing access to knowledge

about biodiversity. Now anyone in the world

has instant access to the original species

description in a couple of clicks.”

Dr. John SullivanEvolutionary BiologistAcademy of Natural Sciences, PhiladelphiaCornell University

A Free & Open Library

A Commitment to Open Access…

BHL is a charter signatory of the Bouchout Declaration

for Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management.

Fundamental principles of the Declaration:

Free & Open Use

Policies to Foster Free &

Open Access

Persistent Identifiers

Tracking Identifiers to

Ensure Attribution

Infrastructure, Standards &

Protocols to Improve Access

Linked Data

Sustainable Knowledge Management

Registers for Content &

Services

CUSTOM PDF

DOWNLOADS

517,000+

TO DATE

ARTICLE

INDEXING

202,000+

TO DATE

DOI

ASSIGNMENT

104,000+

TO DATE

BHL offers a range of free services

API &

DATA

EXPORTS

TAXONOMIC

NAME

SEARCHING

REFERENCE

MANAGEMENT

TOOLS

*Stats as of November 2016

“[BHL] is a fantastic resource, making research possible

that would never have been considered in the past. I use it

to find information on particular species and also to find

source documents for further analysis. The ability to

search by taxon name is invaluable.”

Dr. Quentin GroomResearch Assistant and Biogeographer

Botanic Garden Meise, Belgium

Global Biodiversity

Collaboration

BHL collaborates with and contributes

content to a variety of partners…

BHL collaborates with and contributes

content to a variety of partners…

Two more recent collaboration opportunities

"I think BHL is one of the most important and

useful resources online right now. Judging by

how often I use it, I’d say it has an impact on

my research commensurate with that of

Google Scholar or Web of Science.”

Andrew DursoPh.D. Student, HerpetologyBiology DepartmentUtah State University

Expanding Directions

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Field Notes Project• Funded by a Digitizing Hidden Special

Collections and Archives grant from the

Council on Library and Information

Resources (CLIR)

• Two-year award for 491,713 USD.

• Collaborative effort to digitize field notes,

assign metadata, and publish online

through BHL & Internet Archive

• Lead Institutions: Smithsonian Libraries

and Smithsonian Institution Archives.

• Participating Institutions:

American Museum of Natural History;

The Field Museum of Natural History

Library; Harvard University Botany

Libraries; Harvard University, Museum of

Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library;

LuEsther T. Mertz Library, The New York

Botanical Garden; Missouri Botanical

Garden, Peter H. Raven Library; Museum

of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of

California, Berkeley; Yale Peabody

Museum Archives; and Internet Archive.

Smithsonian Field Book Project• Currently funded by the Arcadia

Foundation, UK. Initiated with funding

from the Council on Library and

Information Resources and previously

supported by Smithsonian Women’s

Committee, and the National Park

Service’s Save America’s Treasures.

• Arcadia’s two-year award funded at

511,200 USD.

• Is coordinating work to catalog,

conserve and digitize scientists’ field

notes from the collections of the

Smithsonian.

• Content will be made available through

the Smithsonian’s Collection Search

Center at collections.si.edu and the

Biodiversity Heritage Library at

biodiversitylibrary.org, as well as

international aggregator sites such as

the Internet Archive and the Digital

Public Library of America.

Expanding Access to

Biodiversity Literature• Funded by the Institute of Museum and

Library Services (IMLS) in 2015 as part

of the National Leadership Grants for

Libraries program.

• Two-year award for 846,457 USD.

• EABL is helping libraries, museums,

and natural history societies make their

content more widely available by

providing the tools and support

necessary to facilitate contribution to

the Digital Public Library of America

(DPLA) through BHL.

• Lead Institution: The New York

Botanical Garden.

• Participating Institutions: Harvard

Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of

Comparative Zoology (MCZ), Missouri

Botanical Garden (MBG), and

Smithsonian Libraries (SIL).

• Progress to date: 3,535 volumes (382

titles; 384,474 pages); 106 in copyright

titles from 54 contributors.

109,000+

IMAGES IN FLICKR

TOTAL IMAGES

TAGGED31,000+

218+MILLIONTOTAL VIEWS ON IMAGES

OF TOTAL FLICKR

COLLECTION TAGGED

TAGGED IMAGES IN

EOL

28% 18,000+

BHL FLICKR NAMED 1 OF WIRED’S

27 MUST-FOLLOW FEEDS IN

THE WORLD OF SCIENCE*Stats as of December 2016

WWW.FLICKR.COM/BIODIVLIBRARY

Engagement

BHL is used in exhibitions in our partner institutions, such as “Once There Were Billions” at the National Museum of Natural History.

“BHL came to the rescue when a planned trip to work in

the Mertz Library at The New York Botanical Garden had to

be cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy. Thanks to the online

resources available through BHL I was able to source most

of the key works I needed, with their supporting

bibliographic information.”

Gina DouglasHonorary ArchivistLinnean Society of London

Governance

Executive Committee

BHL GOVERNANCE

BHL Members’ Council

CHAIR

Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn


VICE-CHAIR

Constance Rinaldo

Harvard, Ernst Mayr

Library, MCZ

SECRETARY

Jane Smith

Natural History

Museum, London

Secretariat

BHL GOVERNANCE

Program Diretor


Program Manager

Carolyn Sheffield

Collections

Manager

Bianca Crowley

Outreach &

Communication

Manager

Grace Costantino

Technical Advisory Group

BHL GOVERNANCE


BHL Program Director

Carolyn Sheffield

BHL Program Manager

Mike Lichtenberg

BHL Developer

Joel Richard


Susan Lynch

The New York

Botanical Garden

“I am pretty sure I exclaimed ‘this is amazing!’ out

loud as soon as I discovered BHL, and I immediately

bookmarked it in my browser. BHL helps fill this void

by providing such resources freely to the public.”

Aaron SimsRare Plant Botanist

California Native Plant Society (CNPS)

Financial Structure

FUNDING SOURCES

• Member and Affiliate Dues & Fees

• Institutional Endowments

• Grants• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

• Arcadia Fund

• Council on Library & Information

Resources

• Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation

• Institute of Museum & Library Services

• JRS Foundation

• MacArthur Foundation

• Mellon Foundation

• National Endowment for the Humanities

• National Science Foundation (NSF)

• Richard Lounsbery Foundation

• U.S. Federal Funding• Federal allocation to Smithsonian

Libraries

• Donations

• Product Development

• Institutional Subventions

• In-Kind Contributions

CASH & IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS

DIRECT STAFF$1,112,785.14

VALUE

OF

MEMBER & AFFILIATE

CONTRIBUTIONS 2015

OTHER$246,123.06

2014

VS

2015

TOTAL IN-KIND

CONTRIBUTIONS

2014$1,437,666.46

2015$1,358,908.20

14TOTAL MEMBER & AFFILIATE

FTEs WORKING ON BHL IN 2015

2006 – 2016

Grants Received (by year)

“BHL is an awesomely useful resource! It’s

very helpful to have the BHL when I’m

traveling away from ‘home base.’ No need to

carry around a rare 120 year old book if you

can just open a scanned file of it on your

computer.”

Dr. Christopher MahInvertebrate ZoologistSmithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Outreach

62,000+TOTAL FOLLOWERS ON

SOCIAL MEDIA

TOTAL FOLLOWERS

11,500+

TOTAL FOLLOWERS

11,200+

TOTAL FOLLOWERS

30,800+

TOTAL FOLLOWERS

5,000+

AVERAGE MONTHLY

READERS (CY16)

2,300+

FOLLOW @BIODIVLIBRARY

*Stats as of January 2017

TOTAL FOLLOWERS

3,500+

MAJOR MEETINGS

• 2016 DLF Forum, Milwaukee, 6-9 November 2016

• GBIF 23, Brasilia, 24-28 October 2016

• Library Leaders Forum 2016, Internet Archive, San

Francisco, 26-28 October 2015

• CETAF 40 General Assembly Madrid, Spain, 18-19

October 2016

• The 8th Shanghai International Library Forum,

Shanghai, 6-8 July 2016

• SPNHC 31st Annual Meeting, Berlin, 19-26 June

2016

• Open Repositories, Ireland, June 2016

• Society for Scholarly Publishing, Vancouver, June

2016

• BHL/ITIS/EOL/GBIF Meeting, Prague, June 2016

• BHL 2016 Annual Meeting and 7th Global BHL

Meeting, London, 11-15 April 2016

• BHL Mexico Workshop, CONABIO, Mexico City,

Mexico, 2-4 December 2015

• LITA Forum, Minneapolis, 15 November 2015 BHL

• Staff Meeting, Washington, DC, 12-13 November

2015

• Library Leaders Forum 2015, Internet Archive, San

Francisco, 21-23 October 2015

• 22nd GBIF Governing Board Meeting (GB22),

Madagascar, 5-11 October 2015

• TDWG 2015, Nairobi, 28 September - 1 October

2015

Engage with audiences

Support BHL Financial SustainabilityCafePress: http://www.cafepress.com/biodiversityheritagelibrary

AWARDS

• Digital Library Federation (DLF) 2016

Community/Capacity Award (joint recipient with

Archive of American Broadcasting).

2016

• Internet Archive Hero Award. Global Leaders

in Sharing Knowledge.

2015

• Laureate. IDG’s Computerworld Honors

Program.

• Charles Robert Long Award of Extraordinary

Merit. Council on Botanical and Horticultural

Libraries.

2013

• Victorian Government Arts Leadership

Recognition Award (BHL Australia).

2012

• John Thackray Medal. The Society for the

History of Natural History.

2011

• Outstanding Collaboration Award. Association

for Library Collections & Technical Services

(ALCTS).

2010

“Joining BHL represents a greater opportunity for CONABIO

to provide broader access to Mexico’s biodiversity

knowledge contained within published literature. We believe

that only with a well-informed society it is possible to

develop and strengthen a culture of appreciation and

valuation of Mexico’s natural capital.”

Dr. José SarukhánCONABIO National Coordinator

Mexico City, Mexico

BHL and You …

The Biodiversity Heritage Library

relies on its network of partners to

grow its vast online collections, to

effectively serve its worldwide

user base, and to maintain its

impact as a leader in both the

library and biodiversity

communities.

BHL Partners: Members and Affiliates

BHL welcomes new Partners

through a tiered participation

structure to accommodate

libraries of various sizes and

capacity.

Member

Affiliate

BHL Partners: Members and Affiliates

• participate in influencing the direction of the

consortium;

• leverage resources including access to a

pool of scanning funds;

• access to additional fee-based services

provided exclusively to BHL Partners;

• participate in governance and direction of

BHL;

• participate in collaborative grant and funding

opportunities that directly benefit partner

institutions.

Tangible Institutional benefits

BHL partners ...

2006 – 2016

Grants Received (by Lead Institution)

• expand the reach and impact of the

their library’s digital content;

• have increased visibility of the

institution and library both within the

library professional sphere as well as

in professional organizations;

• engage a global audience through

the BHL’s extensive social media

reach;

Intangible Institutional benefits

BHL partners ...

• participate in a community of active,

engaged leading information

professionals;

• participate in a global digital library

program that grew out of a direct

need from the taxonomic community;

• are recognized as digital library

leaders as part of the award winning

BHL;


BHL partners ...

• have focused aggregation of library content

that complements that content in large

general digital library projects such as

Europeana, DPLA, Gallica, HathiTrust, etc.;

• showcase content with their global peers

within a biodiversity context;

• wider collaboration with global biodiversity

and information organizations including

GBIF, SciColl, CETAF, ICSTI, etc.


BHL partners ...

... meeting the aspirational goals

of the Convention on Biodiversity

and the Darwin Declaration

A Larger Context

BHL supports your institution in ...

“Such exchange of information shall include

exchange of results of technical, scientific

and socio-economic research, as well as

information on training and surveying

programmes, specialized knowledge,

indigenous and traditional knowledge as

such and in combination with the

technologies referred to in Article 16,

paragraph 1. It shall also, where feasible,

include repatriation of information.”

A Larger Context

Convention on Biodiversity (CBD Article 17, 1992)

“The essential requirements for

accessing and utilising this global

information are: that existing

information held in literature and

by current experts is made

available electronically ”

A Larger Context

Convention on Biological Diversity (1992)

“The essential requirements for

accessing and utilising this global

information are: that existing

information held in literature and

by current experts is made

available electronically ”

A Larger Context

Darwin Declaration (1998)

BHL strives to be part of that larger "Biodiversity

Commons" and provide a space for the literature

of biodiversity to be available such that ...

By engaging with the larger

biodiversity community and major

stakeholder institutions, BHL is

creating a sustainable

biodiversity commons for the

literature of taxonomy.

The Commons succeeds when,

among other elements, there is

"the presence of a community;

small and stable populations

with a thick social network and

social norms".

BHL has created that community

among our natural history and

botanical libraries

Elinor Ostrom, "Sustainable development and the

tragedy of commons" (2009)

Specimens, data, publications...

Thank You!


Twitter@BHLProgDirector

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