BHL presentation Alison Harding: 8th European Bird Curators Meeting Prague Oct 2013

Biodiversity Heritage Library – the vast library of lifeAlison Harding

Biodiversity Heritage Library

In any well-appointed Natural History Library there should be found every book and every edition of every book dealing in the remotest way with the subjects concerned. One never knows wherein one edition differs from or supplements the other and unless these are on the same table at the same time it is not possible to collate them properly. Moreover for accurate work it is necessary for the student to verify every reference he may find; it is not enough to copy from a previous author; he must verify each reference itself from the original.

Charles Davies Sherborn, Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922


• The cited half-life of publications in taxonomy is longer than in any other scientific discipline

• The decay rate is longer than in any scientific discipline

- Macro-economic case for open access, Tom Moritz


• 2003 Encyclopedia of Life Meeting, Telluride, Colorado

• 2004 Webwise: Sharing Digital Content

• 2005 February - Library and Laboratory: the Marriage of Research, Data and Taxonomic Literature, London

• 2005 May – Interested Libraries meet in Washington to lay groundwork for BHL


• American Museum of Natural History

• Natural History Museum

• Smithsonian Institution

• Field Museum (Chicago)

• Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library (MBL/WHOI)

• More….


• Missouri Botanical Garden

• New York Botanical Garden

• Royal Botanic Garden, Kew

• Harvard University, Botany Libraries

• Harvard University Ernst Meyer Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology

• And later…


• California Academy of Sciences Library

• Cornell University Library

• Library of Congress

• US Geological Survey

• Academy of Natural Sciences Library & Archives



• Vision Inspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge.

• Mission The Biodiversity Heritage Library works collaboratively to make biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community


• Open Access

• Permissions

– Seek permission

– Opt-in copyright

• Re-use

– Encyclopaedia of Life

– Tropicos.org

– BioStor


• Butterflies and Moths of the World Generic Names and their Type-species



Scanning• Title selection

• Bid list

• Monographic deduplication

• Internet Archive

– Metadata

– Scanning

• Editing












Feedback



Questions?

Education

BHL presentation Alison Harding: 8th European Bird Curators Meeting Prague Oct 2013