Botanical Literature Goes Global: The Biodiversity Heritage Library

2010·3.7 MB·

by  Judith A. Warnement

植 物 分 类 与 资 源 学 报 ,33 ( ):
摇 2011 1 39~45
Plant Diversity and Resources :
摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 DOI 10.3724/SP.J.1143.2011.10239
Botanical Literature Goes Global The Biodiversity
:
Heritage Library
*
Judith A.WARNEMENT
BotanyLibraries HarvardUniversityHerbaria
( , ,22 DivinityAve.,Cambridge,MA,USA)
Abstract
: Scholars in the natural sciences rely on historic literature more than any other branch of science. Yet
much of this material has limited global distribution and much of it is available in only a few select libraries. This
wealth ofknowledgeisavailableonlytothosefewwhocangaindirectaccesstosignificantlibrarycollections,asitu鄄
ation that is considered one of the chief impediments to the efficiency of research in the field. Community support
andnewtechnologiesledtotheformationoftheBiodiversityHeritageLibrary. TheBHLisaninternationalcollabora鄄
tion of naturalhistorylibrariesworkingtogethertomakebiodiversityliteratureavailableforusebythewidestpossible
audience through open access and sustainable management.
Key words
: Biodiversity Heritage Library; Encyclopedia of Life; Botanical libraries; Digital libraries; Taxonomic
intelligence; Taxonomic literature
CLC number Document Code Article ID
: G25摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 : A摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 :2095-0845(2011)01-039-07
Background
Missouri Botanical Garden agreeing to support the
The biodiversity community is at the forefront of development of the technical infrastructure. By Feb鄄
developing international standards and applying new ruary of 2007 a formal organizational meeting was
technologies to merge and expand historic datasets hosted by Harvard忆s Museum of Comparative Zoolo鄄
with current research, as exemplified by the Biodi鄄 gy, where the governance structure, operational
versity Heritage Library (BHL) program. The idea plans, and working committees for the BHL were
for this project started in March, 2005, as scien鄄 formed. Charter members included natural history
tists, informatics experts, and librarians convened at museum libraries (American Museum of Natural
a session entitled “Libraries and Laboratories冶 hos鄄 History; Field Museum; Natural History Museum,
ted by the Natural History Museum in London to London; and Smithsonian Institution), botanical
share ideas, goals, and concerns. One outcome was garden libraries (Missouri Botanical Garden; New
a shared vision to build an integrated digital biodi鄄 York Botanical Garden; and Royal Botanic Gardens,
versity library modeled after Botanicus, Missouri Bo鄄 Kew), as well as academic and research libraries
tanical Garden忆s digital library. A follow鄄up organi鄄 (Harvard University忆s Botany Libraries; Ernst Mayr
zational meeting was hosted by the Smithsonian Insti鄄 Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology; and
tution Library (SIL) in June of2006, where librari鄄 Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceano鄄
ans from major natural history, botanical garden, graphic Institution Library). Libraries representing
and research institutions in the United States and the Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia)
Great Britain were invited to participate in a consor鄄 and California Academy of Sciences joined in 2008.
tium that would build a global digital collection. All The Biodiversity Heritage Library portal (www.
of the participants agreed to move forward, with the biodiversitylibrary. org; see Fig. 1) was officially
* Authorforcorrespondence;E鄄mail:[email protected];phone[phone];Fax [phone]
Receiveddate: 2010-12-13, Accepteddate: 2010-12-30
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launched in May,2007,with Botanicus as the under鄄 The Biodiversity Heritage Library is not a legal
pinning of a rapidly expanding biodiversity library. entity, but a federation of libraries bound by memo鄄
randa of understanding. Members have signed agree鄄
ments and the library directors represent their re鄄
spective institutions on an Institutional Council. An
elected Executive Committee conducts routine busi鄄
ness, and works closely with the three salaried posi鄄
tions that include an executive director, a technical
director, and a collections coordinator. There are
weekly teleconferences scheduled by the Executive
Committee, monthly calls scheduled with the Institu鄄
tional Council, and there is one face鄄to鄄face meeting
held each year. These two groups oversee policy and
funding decisions, while the details are managed by
Fig.1摇 TheBiodiveristyHeritageLibraryportal
a variety of broadly representative committees. The
Materials and methods scanning staff members teleconference weekly by
phone and have been instrumental in developing the
Partners in the Biodiversity Heritage Library
tools that manage bidding, workflow, and quality
(BHL) program are working together to digitize the
control protocols. A collections committee monitors
published literature of biodiversity held in their re鄄
the overall cohesiveness of BHL content, refines in鄄
spective collections, and to make that literature a鄄
gest criteria, and reviews all collections鄄related is鄄
vailable for open access as a part of a global “biodi鄄 sues. An active technical committee designs all as鄄
versity commons冶. The BHL program is the scan鄄 pects of the BHL global infrastructure, explores and
ning and digitization component of the Encyclopedia engages in partnerships that will advance the project忆
of Life (EOL) (www. eol. org), Harvard Universi鄄 s mission. The project is supported by the Encyclo鄄
ty忆s Professor Edward O. Wilson忆s vision to create a pedia of Life budget with grants from the John D.
web page for every species of the earth忆s biota. An鄄 and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Al鄄
other key collaborator is the Internet Archive (IA) fred P. Sloan Foundation, funds from EOL忆s five
(www.archive.org), which is dedicated to “univer鄄 anchor institutions, the partner institutions, and oth鄄
sal access to human knowledge冶 and provides most er grants.
BHL partners with low cost mass scanning, archival The BHL consortium is working with the global
storage of files, image processing, and technology taxonomic community, rights holders and other inter鄄
development. Scanning facilities have been opened ested parties to ensure that this biodiversity heritage
in London, Boston, New York, and Washington, is available to all and contributes to the International
D. C. to assist with the BHL and other scanning Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the
projects. The IA also allows the BHL to “ingest冶 Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
other natural history content contributed by non鄄BHL “Taxonomic intelligence冶 is the inclusion of taxo鄄
partners like the California Digital Library, the Uni鄄 nomic practices, skills and knowledge within infor鄄
versity of Illinois at Urbana鄄Champaign, the Univer鄄 matics services to manage information about organ鄄
sity of Toronto, and the Boston Library Consortium. isms. Dubbed the Universal Biological Indexer and
The partnership enriches the BHL collection and le鄄 Organizer, or uBio, BHL is using a sophisticated al鄄
verages limited scanning dollars. gorithm to locate likely name strings in OCR text,
期
1 摇 摇 摇 摇 Judith A.WARNEMENT: Botanical Literature Goes Global: The Biodiversity Heritage Library摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 4摇1
has “discovered冶 10.7 million name strings in and yet essential to taxonomists忆 research.
NameBank (Fig.2) (www.ubio.org/index.php? pa鄄 The technical team developed tools to coordi鄄
gename=namebank),and serves as a name thesaurus. nate scanning efforts and avoid duplication. A mer鄄
The link between the name service and the BHL col鄄 ged database of members忆 serials holdings was crea鄄
lection creates a powerful new tool for scholars. ted as a “bid list冶 so that each library can indicate
the titles it intends to scan. If problems are discov鄄
ered, such as missing volumes, or pages, or illus鄄
trations, then a call goes out to other libraries to
scan those volumes. Monographs are selected by
each library along subject areas, and the BHL col鄄
lection is checked prior to scanning to avoid duplica鄄
tion. All items are barcoded and shipping manifests
are created using a tool called WonderFetch (biodi鄄
versitylibrary.blogspot.com/2008/06/wonderfetchtm鄄
ia鄄metaxml鄄fields.htm). The partner libraries can
populate fields with data that would not normally be
populated as part of the standard IA process, and
Fig.2摇 NameBankportal then store those values alongside each scanned item
in the IA repository. The impetus for implementing
Systematists and taxonomists need access to the
WonderFetch was not just to automate the inclusion
historic literature to support current research. The
of essential data elements like the volume and issue
cited half鄄life of publications in taxonomy and the
information for serials, but to also capture due dili鄄
“decay rate冶 are longer than in any other scientific gence, rights, and licensing information related to
discipline so the “current冶 biodiversity literature each item. Partner libraries underwrite all of the
spans more than250 years. At the outset of the pro鄄 costs associated with identifying, processing, and
ject, the BHL needed to calculate the scope of the shipping materials, and BHL grants support the costs
biodiversity domain. OCLC (www.oclc. org/us/en/ associated with scanning and digital processing.
default.htm), the major international library utility,
Results and Discussion
supported the BHL by merging all of the partners忆
catalog records into a database so OCLC忆s collection The BHL portal currently offers more than 44
analysis tool could be used to profile the overall col鄄 000 titles represented by nearly 86 000 volumes de鄄
lection. The outcome showed that biodiversity litera鄄 livering more than32 million pages of content. Users
ture is represented by 1. 3 million catalog records. can search by simply browsing by author, title, or
More than 800000 records describe monographs and subject, or can use the novel language, year of pub鄄
40 000 records describe journal titles, with 12 500 lication, and source map options (Fig.3). More re鄄
records representing current titles. About forty per鄄 fined searches can be achieved by using the search
cent of the material was published prior to 1923, box that allows the user to search for a specific au鄄
generally placing it the public domain. Sixty鄄three thor, title, subject, or species names. It is the de鄄
percent of the records were for works in English, livery of search results that is unique to BHL. Spe鄄
and German was the second most frequent language cies names results are delivered as a bibliography
(9%). The BHL忆s scanning efforts have focused on that cites the source title, author, date, and pages,
the pre鄄1923 content that is not readily available, and includes a link to the NameBank record. The
植 物 分 类 与 资 源 学 报 第 卷
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pages of any volume selected are automatically download the bibliographic record, selected pages,
scanned by the uBio search feature for species images, or the entire volume. The menu also fea鄄
names. The results appear in the “Names on this tures PDF or OCR download options, and links to
page冶 box on the lower left鄄hand corner of the views via other portals. In order to download select鄄
screen (Fig. 4). Links to EOL species pages are ed pages, users supply an email address, and a cita鄄
highlighted, and clicking on any of the discovered tion for the request, and then select up to one hun鄄
names will generate a species name bibliography. dred pages. These documents are retained when ap鄄
Searchers can click on any name in the uBio box to propriate metadata is provided and are made availa鄄
see a bibliography of all other occurrences of the ble to other users through CiteBank (citebank.org).
name in the entire portal. For example, selecting Citebank (Fig.7) is still under development, but in
Rhododendron indicum
will generate the bibliography addition to saving the BHL鄄selected documents, it is
shown in Fig.5 that includes links to all source ma鄄 intended to provide robust search and browse capa鄄
terials. bilities to biodiversity publications stored in multiple
The “Download/About this book冶 tab appears international repositories and aggregate content from
(Fig.6) when a title is displayed. Users are able to as many systems as possible, so that biodiversity
ANaturalist
Fig.3摇 PortraitandtitlepageinErnestH. Wilsons Fig.4摇 SpeciesnamesdiscoveredbyuBioappearinboxinlower
inWesternChina
. (London:Methuen,1913) leftcorner. NotethelinkstoEOLspeciespages
Rhododendronindicum
Fig.5摇 uBiogeneratedbibliographyfor Fig.6摇 BHLDownload/Aboutthisbooktab
期
1 摇 摇 摇 摇 Judith A.WARNEMENT: Botanical Literature Goes Global: The Biodiversity Heritage Library摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 4摇3
researchers have a single point of access to published na (Fig. 10) (www. bhl鄄china. org/cms/en), and
materials. CiteBank is also intended to provide a the Internet Archive installed a scanner in Beijing in
storage platform for articles and documents that are the summer of 2010 to help build the BHL鄄China
Australia
digitized, but not yet online and offer a common sys鄄 collection. In , The Atlas of Living Aus鄄
tem for researchers to share specialized bibliogra鄄 tralia, funded by the Australian government忆s Na鄄
phies. Users will be able to upload, edit, and share tional Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy
their own personal lists of references and citations, program joined BHL in June 2010 (www. ala. org.
and these references will be linked to scanned con鄄 au). Additional partnerships, policies, tools, and
tent in the Biodiversity Heritage Library portal. In tutorials are being explored and developed to refine
addition, BHL offers to scan professional societies忆 the BHL to increasingly extend its global reach.
publications or other publishers content at BHL忆s ex鄄 A great deal has been achieved through conven鄄
pense and integrate the content into the BHL. A鄄 tional mass scanning technologies and practices, but
greements with nearly forty publishers have added a鄄 a significant portion of early biodiversity literature is
bout one hundred titles to the collection. quite rare and valuable, sometimes fragile, and of鄄
The Biodiversity Heritage Library wiki (Fig.8) ten the book is too large or has folded maps or illus鄄
(biodivlib.wikispaces.com) presents a wealth of in鄄 trations that do not fit on conventional scanning
Retooling Special Collec鄄
formation about the project, detailed instructions and beds. A planning grant,
tions in the Age of Mass Digitization
tutorials for using the various features, and lists of , awarded by the
members and BHL staff. Developers忆 tools are de鄄 Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in
scribed and documented, and the BHL忆 s opt鄄in 2008 allowed BHL partners to identify and develop a
copyright feature is explained. The BHL also uses cost鄄effective and efficient large鄄scale digitization
popular social media tools to connect with the pub鄄 workflow and to explore ways to enhance metadata
lic, including Twitter, Facebook, and the BHL blog for library materials that are designated as “special
(biodiversitylibrary. blogspot. com). Each site at鄄 collections.冶 The group held a series of meetings,
tracts and supports a varied community of scientists communicated by email, and established a wiki to
and the general public. record meetings, track progress, and share docu鄄
Interest and support in the BHL has grown at an ments about costs, statistics and workflows, and
astonishing rate. In less than five years the BHL has small鄄scale scanning tests. The report included ex鄄
grown into an international partnership that mirrors tensive cost analyses and recommendations for e鄄
the global nature of biodiversity research. Formal quipment configurations to scan rare and oversized
BHL agreements are in place in Europe, China, and materials.
Australia, and there is strong interest in South A鄄 BHL partners are also exploring ways to intro鄄
Europe
merica and Egypt. In , colleagues at twenty鄄 duce other essential content to the BHL portal. Col鄄
eight European institutions have obtained funding lectors忆 field notes, plant lists, and diaries often
from the European Union eContentplus Program to hold important information that supplements content
establish a BHL鄄Europe (www. bhl鄄europe. eu), found on specimen labels and published accounts.
which is developing the technical infrastructure and Access to this primary source material is even more
tools to deliver content from many scanning projects problematic to scholars because most archival collec鄄
throughout the continent. In the United Kingdom tions, if catalogued, are not described in very fine
work is also proceeding via the BHL and Europeana detail. The United States National Herbarium and
China
(Fig.9) (www. europeana. eu/portal). In , Smithsonian Institution Archives have received a
the Chinese Academy of Sciences supports BHL鄄Chi鄄 Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives
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Fig.7摇 CiteBankhomepage Fig.8摇 BHLwiki
Fig.9摇 Europeanaportal Fig.10摇 BHL鄄Chinaportal
ature
Grant, from the Council on Library and Information will develop a system for integrating biological
Resources (CLIR) to catalog all the field books, researchers忆 field and specimen notes with museum
unpublished journals, loose notes, and sketches that specimens and related electronically published litera鄄
document field research related to all disciplines of ture. The enhanced and integrated access to biologi鄄
Exposing Biodiversity Field
biology. The grant, cal data will serve a wide variety of users, and will
Books and Original Expedition Journals at the Smith鄄
connect to other ongoing projects such as the Biodi鄄
sonian Institution
, will also will build a cataloging versity Heritage Library.
tool to and create a central repository so that other The Biodiversity Heritage Library will soon ben鄄
institutions can contribute their holdings. The en鄄 efit from another new collaboration. The Internation鄄
hanced level of description will improve access to al Association of Plant Taxonomists (IAPT) has giv鄄
these important research materials that are frequently en their permission to rescan and integrate with the
difficult to discover and access remotely. BHL the monumental fifteen volume botanical bibli鄄
Taxonomic Literature nd
Several BHL partners have been awarded an ography, , 2 ed. (TL鄄2).
IMLS grant as a companion grant to the Smithsonian忆s The Smithsonian Institution Library has been awar鄄
Connecting Content A Collaboration
CLIR proposal. : ded an Atherton Seidell Grant to accomplish the
to Link Field Notes to Specimens and Published Liter鄄
scanning and design the schema. The BHL envisions
期
1 摇 摇 摇 摇 Judith A.WARNEMENT: Botanical Literature Goes Global: The Biodiversity Heritage Library摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 摇 4摇5
a dynamically linked “TL鄄3冶 that will connect cita鄄 the Biodiversity Heritage Library faces many challen鄄
tions to published references and allow for correc鄄 ges in the near future. Initial sources of funding end
tions and the addition of new and expanded content. in 2012, and a plan for financial and digital sustain鄄
The Biodiversity Heritage Library has achieved ability must be formulated. The rapid international
remarkable success in its relatively short existence. expansion of BHL presents new governance issues,
The partners have demonstrated that independent increases the need for clear and focused standards,
and geographically dispersed institutions can collabo鄄 and strategies to avoid duplication of effort. BHL is
rate effectively, and have proven their ability to gen鄄 working to ensure the technical infrastructure for de鄄
erate significant financial support. The technical ac鄄 livering and preserving content through digitization
complishments by a small team of talented and dedi鄄 and retrospective ingestion, as well as the ability to
cated informatics specialists and the efficient and continue to deliver new services as needed by the
collegial intra鄄institutional working groups are appar鄄 community.
ent in the array of tools and services currently deliv鄄
Acknowledgements
ered and under development via the various BHL in鄄 : The author wishes to acknowledge all
terfaces. On June 27, 2010, the American Library of the BHL partners for their collegiality and dedication, and
Dr. JinshuangMaandtheShanghaiChenshanBotanicalGar鄄
Association忆s Association for Library Collections &
den and Plant Science Research Center for their support.
Technical Services (ALCTS) awarded their Out鄄
standing Collaboration Citation to the BHL in recog鄄
References
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IAMSLICProceedings摇 http://hdl.handle.net/1912/3787
pation in the BHL opt鄄in copyright model. The por鄄
Rinaldo C, 2009. The Biodiversity Heritage Library: exposing the
tal has recorded nearly1.5 million visits since Janu鄄 Journal of Agricultural & Food Infor鄄
taxonomicliterature [J].
ary of2008, the taxonomic intelligence tool is highly mation 10
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effective, and there are high levels of OCR accuracy Rinaldo C, Norton C,2010. The Biodiversity Heritage Library: an
in late 19th and 20th century printing. However, expandinginternationalcollaboration