Biodiversity Heritage Library in Australia during 2014-2015

BHL Australia

Dr Elycia WallisManager, Online CollectionsMuseum VictoriaChair, Global BHL Coordinating Committee@elyw

BHL Australia – 2014 and beyond

• To provide a digital literature service for the ALA

• To undertake new scanning projects• To participate in the global BHL

partnership

To assist other institutions who want to start scanning or uploading already scanned content

To work with ALA staff to continue to innovate with access to digital literature

To extend the collaboration in Australia and possibly New Zealand

New team

BHL Australia team at Museum Victoria: (L-R) Hayley Webster, Ely Wallis, Cerise Howard, Jim Healey, Nicole Kearney

New equipment

New cameras, lights and clamps for the BHL-Au digitisation rig. Photos by Jim Healey

Google Art Project Exhibits

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/museum-victoria?projectId=art-project

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/bhlau

Uploaded to BHL since Oct 2014• 60 volumes• 30 titles• 12334 pages

Partnerships• Australian Museum • Queensland Museum• South Australian Museum• Western Australian Museum

BHL-Au progress report

BHL-Au conference papers

Making multi-institution collaborations work – is there a secret sauce? Dr Elycia Wallis, MWA 2014

Scanning Locally, Collaborating GloballyDr Elycia Wallis, VALA 2014

A Different Type of Animal? Advocating for Natural Science ArchivesJulia Blasé et al (incl. Nicole Kearney) SAA 2015

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/artofscience

New collections on BHL• BHL Australia• Art of Science

Blog posts• BHL-Au is back! (BHL)• Art of Science (MV & BHL)• Transcribing field diaries (MV)

BHL-Au online promotion

Historic field diaries

Full of data• species’ abundance

and distribution • field conditions and

survey techniques• people, places and events

Inaccessible• hand-written• uncatalogued• unpublished• unsearchable

Transcribing field diaries

Digitisation• scanning via BHL rig

Transcription• partnership with DigiVol / ALA• custom templates and tutorials• recording of all species,

people & place names• transcription volunteers• validation volunteer

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

Graham Brown, Victoria, 1948.

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

Transcribing field diaries

Outcomes so far• 8 field diaries digitised

and uploaded onto DigiVol

• 6 diaries 100% transcribed (1/month)

• 5 transcriptions 100% validated

• 41 volunteers contributed

http://volunteer.ala.org.au/

Allan McEvey, Macquarie Island, 1957.

Thanks