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BHL and Our Users: Alain Touwaide, Emanuela Appetiti and PLANT - Posted: 2/14/2012 | Touwaide and Appetiti analyzing the Ayasofia Codex 3703 in the Suleymaniye Kutuphanesi, a library rich in precious manuscripts, Istanbul, Turkey. |
Happy Valentine's Day! We couldn't think of a better day to feature devoted couple and colleagues Dr. Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti and their work on the PLANT project. Touwaide and Appetiti founded and continue to grow and support the PLANT website, which Dr. Touwaide presented about at the Life and Literature Conference in Chicago, IL, 14-15 November 2011. Conference attendees expressed great interest in the PLANT project - a project with goals and objectives not unlike BHL - and several requested that we feature the project on our blog. We thank Alain and Emanuela for sharing their expertise and experiences with us. __________________________________________
The PLANT website is a digital encyclopedia of historical botanical illustrations, with representations of plants from herbals, books on botany and medicinal plants printed between 1481 and 1650 and usually addressed to doctors and apothecaries. CLICK HERE to read more about Renaissance herbals. PLANT - an acronym for PLantarum Aetatis Novae Tabulae, which means in Latin Renaissance Botanical Illustrations - does not only refer to plants, but general Renaissance botanical illustration.
The website stems from the interest of couple Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti, who share not only life but also a passion for the history of botany. The site results from their desire to open this field to a wider audience and to make this patrimony accessible worldwide.
Touwaide and Appetiti contemplated such a collection for years and collected material worldwide for it in their Historia Plantarum collection. In 2001, they submitted a proposal for funding to the Smithsonian Women's Committee and were granted an award that allowed them to create a first prototype in order to assess the feasibility of their project and to develop a protocol.
Once the feasibility of the project was verified, Touwaide and Appetiti needed first to systematically inventory the herbals produced during the time period from 1481 to 1650, that is, from the first printed herbal to one century before Linnaeus. They then had to browse, analyse and digitize all such books, so as to create the encyclopedia they had planned, which will show the evolution (or involution) of botanical illustration and knowledge, including the possible introduction of new species or the disappearance of others. To this end, they asked and got permission to carry out this task in the holdings of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma (National Library of Rome), which, for historical reasons, has a particularly rich collection of Incunabula and Renaissance printed books (16th century and later). They also expanded their research to the Library of the Botanical Gardens of Padua to complete the collection of data. Padua has one of the most ancient botanical gardens in the world and also a valuable historical library that owns some of the rare editions not present in the collections of the National Library of Rome.
 | EW volunteers in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Team I 2006 |
During the years 2003-2006, Touwaide and Appetiti were able to study and photograph all Renaissance herbals in the collections of the Rome and Padua libraries. In 2007, in collaboration with some 250 Earthwatch Institute volunteers who signed up to participate in this large-scale research [see 2004 field report here], they broadened their work to Washington DC. In total, they collected over 70,000 images and generated two dictionaries of plant names: one of the Medieval and Renaissance names listed in the volumes they studied (comprising 32,000 items in Arabic, Medieval Latin and vernacular languages), and the second with the names of plants in five modern languages (12,000+ items). Together with the dictionary of ancient names (Greek and Latin) that Touwaide has compiled for his Flora of Classical Antiquity, these dictionaries provide the names of all the plants mentioned in ancient texts and books from the most ancient scientific treatises to one century before Linnaeus and make it possible to link them with their current name.
Touwaide and Appetiti's research goes beyond historical documentation, as they identify the plants according to contemporary taxonomy. In collaboration with the scientists in the Botany Department of the Smithsonian, they study the representations of the plants they collected from books and the texts that accompany these illustrations. Thus, they have been able to confirm the identifications made in previous literature or to suggest new ones, made possible due to cross-checking the representations and descriptions in a large quantity of material.
Since its very inception, Touwaide and Appetiti envisioned the PLANT website as much more than just a collection of illustrations, however beautiful they are. They provide users with an impressive collection of data, starting with a full description of the books (including publisher and place of publication) but also detailed biographies of the authors and publishers and portraits of the authors, as this information is often missing from other websites presenting ancient herbals. By researching and stuyding the bios of authors and publishers, they produced original texts based on first hand consultation of primary documentation, including searching for portraits of the authors in the collections -- and with the help of -- the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation.
 | EW DC teams, at work with Touwaide at the National Museum of Natural History, on the second phase of the PLANT Project. Team A, 2006 |
Touwaide and Appetiti plan to provide a short bio-sketch of the publishers along with the list of the botanical books they have published, so as to highlight their contribution to the production of herbals and to follow the production of botanical knowledge throughout Europe. Geo-referencing of book production is made possible thanks to the identification of the places where books were produced. For all books on the website, place names on the title page are in Latin. When clicking on these names, a small window opens with the current name (both in the local language and in English) and country (Which is sometimes not so easy to discover, i.e. What city is Ebrodunum?).
The metadata provided on the site is more extensive than the explicit information that can be retrieved from books. Touwaide and Appetiti generate much implicit information aimed at illustrating the dynamics of an author's production. For each ancient work on the site, they present the first edition. A link at the bottom of the page leads to an additional page listing subsequent editions and translations (listed in chronological order), so as to make it possible to see the continuity and diffusion of the work. Only subsequent editions containing pages with new or different illustrations, however, are reproduced. As a result, users can visualize the possible transformation of a work through time.
Similarly, it is possible to retrieve all the illustrations of the same plant in the Web site, displayed in chronological order, so as to visually follow the transformation of botanical drawing and knowledge. All the illustrations can be enlarged to study the plant in detail. This is an example. For each plant contained in the website it will be also possible in the future to display a digital image of a dry specimen from the US National Herbarium, and an image of the living plant in nature. Thus, users of the site will have tools to further study Renaissance illustrations: not only will they be able to appreciate the degree of exactness in Renaissance illustrations, but, by having access to the material, they can also study the methods of ancient illustrators and investigate the way ancient scientists analyzed and described plants.
BHL makes it possible to go further. When Touwaide and Appetiti became aware of it, they immediately thought to link the Linnean literature digitized and posted in the BHL to the plants presented in the PLANT website. The connection will allow users to follow plant information from its early depiction in antiquity to the 15th and 16th century herbals, to Linnaeus, and then, through the BHL, from him to the 20th century.
Thanks to all its information and navigation possibilities, the website goes way beyond an encyclopedia of botanical illustrations. It contextualizes the books and the plants, and generates a new dimension in the history of botany, showing its transformation over time. Though on a modest basis, the PLANT web site provides depth to the BHL collection of material: it introduces, in a certain sense, a third dimension to the BHL as it collects all the material that led to the literature collected in the BHL. You cannot understand Linnaeus without Dioscorides, Mattioli, Laguna or Bauhin and Dalechamps, for example. PLANT contains all the readings of Linnaeus, the scientific context of his work, and what Linnaeus probably read.
 | Alain at work in his office in the Botany Department at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. |
The PLANT website provides information to different audiences: from historians of medicine and botany, to historians of art and botanical artists; from classicists interested in the history and production of the book to botanists who need to trace a plant back in time, before Linnaeus. It may also appeal to curious Internet users with any background. For example, users interested in a plant of which they know only the common name will be able to locate it (together with all its other names, including the Linnean binomial designation) and start navigating through the PLANT website, the BHL or the website of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, passing from Antiquity to the modern world, from Linnaeus to his predecessors, from books to nature, from living plants to dry specimina, in an imaginary travel that will be a journey through the construction of botanical science across centuries and cultures.
The PLANT program has been possible thanks to a consortium composed of Touwaide and Appetiti as the project authors and co-principal investigators, the libraries of Rome and Padua in Italy, and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL). Many contributors collaborated at different levels and helped create the PLANT Website, but without the passion and enthusiasm of the Earthwatch volunteers, nothing would have been achieved. The website is dedicated to them. _____________________________________________
Find out more about Alain and Emanuela, and their ambitious project, in these past articles:
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Book of the Week: Floral Masterpiece from Biodiversity Heritage Library on iTunes U - Posted: 2/9/2012 In case you missed our post earlier this week, the Biodiversity Heritage Library is now on iTunes U. From our provider page, you can now download select BHL content through iTunes to your desktop or mobile device, i.e. iPad, iPod touch, and iPhone. And, all for free, of course! We currently have 8 collections available, including: You can learn more about iTunes U through Apple's website. Robert John Thornton was an English physician and botanical writer. After hearing Thomas Martyn's lectures on botany and Linnaeus, he decided to practice medicine rather than his previously-chosen profession in the church. He worked and lectured in medical botany at Guy's Hospital in London, and at the end of the eighteenth century began working on his ambitious project New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus.
New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus is a three-part work, the third part (Temple of Flora) of which was intended to have seventy folio-sized plates. Work on the plates began in May 1798, and the first plates were engraved by Thomas Medland after paintings by Philip Reinagle. The plates were engraved in aquatint, stipple and line.  The work, unfortunately, proved to be Thornton's demise. The expense of the project drained his financial assets, and Thornton was unable to generate significant public interest in the work. To save the project and ensure its completion, a public lottery and a dedication within the work to Queen Charlotte, patroness of botany and fine arts, were ventured, but without success. Only thirty-three colored plates were completed between 1798-1807, and Thornton died in destitution.
It is a tragedy that Thornton's life ended so sadly when his work is now deemed a remarkable masterpiece. We pay him tribute for the incredible achievements of his life and are proud to feature just a few of the stunning illustrations from his creation in this post. You can access New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus: and the Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature (1807) on BHL and within the Floral Mania collection of iTunes U, both for free of course! See all of the illustrations from this masterpiece on our Flickr account and tell us which is your favorite.  |
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Biodiversity Heritage Library on iTunes U - Posted: 2/7/2012We are thrilled to announce that selected collections of BHL content are now available on the new iTunes U! Visit our provider page at http://itunes.apple.com/us/institution/biodiversity-heritage-library/id467689660 to download PDFs of BHL books to your desktop, iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.
 iTunes U is a dedicated area within iTunes that gives users public access to hundreds of thousands of free lectures, video books, podcasts, and courses from learning institutions all over the world. And with the new iTunes U app, users can download content directly onto their iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. To learn more about how iTunes U works, please see this helpful video on Apple's website. Providing BHL content on iTunes U allows us to get our content out to folks in an exciting new way. By positioning BHL content alongside courses from major universities, there is the potential for new audiences to engage with our content in an educational context. And now it is easier than ever to take selected works from the BHL collection on the go with the new iTunes U app.
We are currently offering 8 collections of BHL materials around the following themes: These collections will continue to grow and new collections will be added in the future. Got an idea for a BHL collection you'd like to see in iTunes U? Please leave us a comment below.
*The Charles Darwin's original library is held within Cambridge University Library |
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My Life as a BHL Staffer - Posted: 2/6/2012 Greetings from Cambridge, Mass.! My name is JJ Ford and I have been working as the BHL Project Assistant at the Ernst Mayr Library located in Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology since May 2011. And although I've only been working as a BHL staff member for ten months, it feels like so much longer -- in a good way of course! In less than a year's time, I have learned just how much staff time, effort and brainpower it takes to build the world's first collaborative digital library that makes legacy taxonomic literature available to users for free. The BHL staff members that I have come to know, truly are committed to the idea of making knowledge open, extensive and available to a global audience. Sometimes I have to stop and pinch myself because I feel so lucky to be contributing to such a gratifying mission.
While I may be stationed at Harvard, my role is actually quite similar to Smithsonian staff member, Gilbert Borrego, who we heard from in last month's installment of "My Life as a BHL Staffer." Gilbert beautifully outlined the nuts and bolts of the BHL digitization operation, which gave us an overview of how the books in each partner library's physical collections are selected, processed and scanned. Additionally, we learned why Pagination and Flickr are such important activities. Having the correct pagination for books in BHL and allowing the fabulous plates and illustrations to be exposed in Flickr are two ways that we facilitate better user discovery of articles and images. Like Gilbert, I manage many of these very same activities for Harvard’s portion of BHL user requests. We even have our own Facebook and Flickr sites which, we use to disseminate BHL's outreach messages locally for the students and faculty members here at Harvard. However, to keep things interesting and build on Gilbert's last blog post, I am going to touch on two of my favorite extracurricular BHL activities : 1) the basics of book preservation and 2) my involvement with BHL’s website usability studies.
Preservation and Book Repair Unlike many of the other institutions, many of the book repairs at the Ernst Mayr Library are done on-site. We are lucky to have on staff a resident preservation specialist, Susan DiSanctis, a woman with one of the most interesting lives on human record. Not only has Susan lived amongst the native people of Papua New Guinea, she knows how to fix a book! While working under Susan’s instruction, I learned the basics of paper repair and contrary to what one may think, this is not a skill that is normally taught in library school. In today's digital world, many might say that book preservation is a dying art. Nevertheless, it is still an extremely important activity because often the books that users request to be digitized are damaged and require preservation treatment prior to being sent over to the Internet Archive for scanning. It is my job to determine what our preservation strategy should be for these vulnerable books. In some unfortunate cases, there is very little that we can do for a book because the decaying process is in the advanced stages. For example, this book cannot be repaired because the paper is far too brittle:
Brittle books like these are made from wood-pulp paper. Their pages are literally "burning" from the slow fires of acid decay. The paper in this book will eventually disintegrate into a pile of dust. A very sad fate indeed.
However, there are a good number of lucky books that can be saved and subsequently scanned. Check out my slideshow, which will take you through the basics of a simple paper repair for a book that has been slated for digitization:
Usability Studies
In stark contrast to the hands-on work that book preservation requires, usability studies are conducted in order to measure " the quality of a user's experience when interacting with a product or system--whether a Web site, a software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device." (Usability.gov) The results of these types of studies help web designers build more effective user-centric websites. In keeping with this principle, it has always been BHL's goal to provide a web interface that marries both efficiency and design.
Recently, BHL staff members saw the need to conduct a usability study of our own. The emergence of a newly designed BHL-AU portal from our partners down in Australia prompted us to compare their design with the existing BHL-US website that most of you are probably already intimately acquainted with. Along with my colleagues at the other BHL partner libraries, I conducted local usability tests here at Harvard. The results of the study were illuminating and surprising and will certainly help inform future BHL web interface designs.
BHL-Australia Web Portal
BHL-US Web Portal
Same content. Different interface. Which one do you like better? Which one is easier to navigate and use? Keep reading to find out… And what was the outcome of the usability study done here at Harvard? Our study participants found that the BHL-US portal website was easier to navigate and complete specific BHL related tasks such as finding articles, images and taxonomic species names however, most users thought that BHL-Australia was visually more appealing. The results of this study, will inform the future design of the BHL-US interface which, will be a "love-child" that merges the beauty of Australia’s BHL portal with the function of the US version of the site. Stay tuned for more details on design developments in the months to come! Additionally, if you have extra time to kill you can see the entire usability study in action via screencast.
I hope Gilbert and I have peeled back some of the mystery behind the Biodiversity Heritage Library project and how everything actually comes together. Keep checking in each month to learn about a new BHL staffer and how they contribute to this project in meaningful ways. Speaking for myself, I have found that working on the Biodiversity Heritage Library has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional life. I have met some incredibly intelligent, kind and passionate people along the way and I have learned invaluable skills that I will take with me on my journey as a budding professional in the library world.
Usability definition from: Usability.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Feb. 2012. |
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Book of the Week: Happy Groundhog Day! - Posted: 2/2/2012One of the earliest mentions of Groundhog Day can be found in the diary of a Pennsylvania storekeeper named James Morris, who, on February 4, 1841, wrote: Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as weather is to be moderate. Some one hundred and seventy years later, Groundhog Day, celebrated on February 2nd in the U.S. and Canada, is a spirited, suspenseful day on which we discover our winter fate, or our fate as the groundhog foresees it, anyway. If the groundhog sees his shadow, it's another six weeks of winter. The largest Groundhog Day celebration occurs in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where it has been a local tradition since at least 1887. The star of the show, a very special, perhaps "immortal" groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil, is purported to be 126 years old - a remarkable feat considering the lifespan of most groundhogs in captivity is 9-14 years. But then again, Phil (in 2012) weighs twenty pounds, as opposed to the more typical thirteen pounds, indicating that he might not be an ordinary groundhog. Maybe. But, in any case, he at least makes a bigger target for producing a shadow easily visible to spectators. And that's exactly what Phil did today. According to what some deem the only official groundhog weather predictor, there will be six more weeks of winter. Learn more about the Punxsutawney Groundhog Day celebration on the official website. Long before they found fame and fortune through Groundhog Day, these marmots were well-known within their sciurid family (which includes squirrels, chipmunks and prairie dogs) as the largest member within their geographic range, which incidentally, is North America. They generally grow to between 16-26 inches long, and, with plenty of food and few predators, can weigh up to 31 pounds, though one-third that weight is more typical. Other names for the charismatic creature include woodchuck, whistle-pig, and land-beaver.  While combing through our collection looking for groundhogs, we came across this marvelous book entitled The Quadrupeds of North America, v. 1 (1851). The three volume work contains 153 colored plates, rendered by John James Audubon and the Rev. John Bachman. Of the illustrations, the authors write, In our illustrations we have endeavored (we hope not without success) to place before the public a series of plates, which are not only scientifically correct, but interesting to all, from the varied occupations, expressions, and attitudes, we have given to the different species, together with the appropriate accessories, such as trees, plants, landscapes, &c., with which the figures of the animals are relieved; and we have sought to describe those represented, so as not only to clear away the obscurity which had gathered over some species, but to make our readers acquainted with their habits, geographical distribution, and all that we could ascertain of interest about them... The groundhog is presented in this work as a family portrait, with a mother and her young set against the backdrop of their lowland habitat. Several pages of description, including everything from physical appearance to habitat and behavior, then follows. It's a perfect excerpt for Groundhog Day! Our book of the week is of course filled with beautiful illustrations depicting animals other than groundhogs, and you can view all of them on our Flickr account. For more groundhog and biodiversity fun, follow us on Twitter ( @BioDivLibrary) and take our groundhog trivia challenge on our Facebook page today. Learn more about groundhogs on EOL. |
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Mendeley and BHL - Posted: 1/30/2012BHL has integrated a new feature that enables easy addition of BHL books into your Mendeley library. Mendeley is a modern platform and social network for sharing and storing research, and is fast becoming one of the most feature-rich reference management applications in common use by scientists. Mendeley has a wealth of great features to aid scientists in managing reference materials and find others with similar interests, and best of all, it's free. When you are browsing a book or viewing its bibliographic information, the Mendeley icon  appears in the "Connect wth BHL" panel along the left side of the screen. Take, for example, Linnaeus' Systema Naturae from 1758: http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/542Clicking the Mendeley icon automatically adds this title to your Mendeley library. If you don't have a Mendeley account, you can create one. Once the citation has been imported into Mendeley you can share it with your colleagues, tag it with keywords, or add it to other groups you've joined. You might also consider joining the BHL Group, which includes articles about BHL and related research: http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1477323/biodiversity-heritage-library-bhl/papers/Including this new feature in BHL helps put our legacy literature into modern systems, and gives you an easy way to incorporate BHL materials into your research. For enhancements and suggestions for improvement, please leave a comment! |
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Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library joins BHL! - Posted: 1/30/2012 The Biodiversity Heritage Library welcomes the Albert R. Mann Library of Cornell University to our growing consortium. The Mann Library brings with it a fantastic team of librarians to the BHL workforce, as well as outstanding collections in the fields of agriculture, human ecology and life sciences. Next to Harvard University's, the Ernst Mayr Museum of Comparative Zoology Library and the Botany Libraries, the Cornell University is now the second academic institution to join the BHL. As reported at Cornell:
Mann Library Director, Mary Ochs explains, “our partnership with BHL will significantly increase the visibility and accessibility of Mann’s collections for a global community of researchers. I’m really pleased that this partnership will in turn help connect Cornell scholars with the amazing body of biodiversity-related literature available at all the remarkable institutions that make up the BHL consortium.”
The next focus of Mann’s participation will be the digitization of Cornell’s entomology collection, which is one of the largest and finest in the world. Mann has already digitized more than 190 titles from the Library’s special collections of rare entomology works — including beautifully illustrated gems such as Dru Drury’s 18th-century “Illustrations of Natural History” and Jacob Hübner’s late 19th-century “Geschichte Europäischer Schmetterlinge” — which will soon be added to the BHLsite and will fill out a major area in BHL’s wide-ranging coverage universe of biodiversity literature. A contributor to our scanning partner the Internet Archive, biodiversity related materials from the Cornell University Library have been integrated into the BHL collection. Nearly 4,000 agriculture and life sciences titles were added to BHL in early January, helping us surpass a major milestone: The BHL collection now has over 100,000 volumes, 50,000 titles and over 37 million pages! Many thanks to Cornell University Library for bumping us above and beyond a major digitization goal. Of course, the BHL collection could not be where it is today without the hard work and dedication of its consortium members which have been digitizing volumes since 2007. Back then we had just over a mere 3200 volumes. It is amazing to look back and see how far the collection and the project have come in 5 years. Now a consortium of 14 libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom, the BHL is growing globally to include partners in Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, and across Europe. Here's to more improvements to the BHL portal, more partnerships, and more content over the next 5 years (and many more).
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Our Experience at ALA Midwinter 2012 - Posted: 1/26/2012 A few weeks ago, we posted about our upcoming booth at the ALA Midwinter 2012 meeting in Dallas, TX, 20-24 January. After an extremely successful experience, which included the opportunity to collaborate with our friends at EOL on the booth, as well as the chance for two of our BHL staff members to give talks at the conference, we wanted to briefly fill you all in on the experience. The American Library Association (ALA) was founded in October 1876 and is the oldest and largest library association in the world. It's mission is "to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all." ALA hosts two meetings annually: the Midwinter and Annual meetings. The Midwinter meeting was a collection of events, exhibits, and sessions aimed at discussing the challenges and opportunities facing libraries today. With 6,236 attendees and 3,693 exhibitors, it offered us a fantastic opportunity to showcase the resources available through both BHL and EOL. BHL, along with EOL, collaboratively hosted booth 1157 at the Midwinter meeting. EOL staff member Breen Byrnes, BHL staff members Grace Costantino, Martin Kalfatovic, Chris Freeland, and Suzanne Pilsk, as well as Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) staff member Mary Augusta Thomas, operated the booth throughout the four days of exhibits (Breen and Grace pictured above at booth). We not only engaged in meaningful conversations, answered a multitude of questions about the projects, and highlighted the beautiful images in our Flickr account, but we also gave away great goodies, including brochures, pens, notepads, Post-It notes, bags, cups, and, of course, candy. Happily, many people were already familiar with BHL, and those that weren't were shocked and thrilled to learn that we were a free, open access project. In the midst of so many commercial vendors, and with the reality of constant cuts to library budgets, the word "free" truly stands out. Eighty-five people signed up for the EOL and soon to be coming BHL newsletters. We also engaged in conversations with several librarians at diverse institutions that were interested in sharing their digitized content with BHL. BHL and EOL were particularly popular among librarians working in educational environments, one of which stated, "They're free?! I can't believe I wasn't aware of these projects. My students will love them!" BHL Technical Director Chris Freeland and SIL metadata librarian and BHL metadata guru Suzanne Pilsk gave talks about BHL at a panel discussion on scholarly communication, identifiers, and linked data. Chris Freeland discussed the recent addition of DOIs to BHL content, and the struggles we went through to implement such identifiers. Most vendors, although recognizing the need for a policy to address the situation, were unable to work with a consortium (as opposed to a legal entity) that isn't a publisher and doesn't own all of the content it hosts. Furthermore, since not all of the content in BHL has an ISBN, an additional layer of complication is added to the mix. While CrossRefDOIs, available as Open Linked Data, are now available for BHL content, there are still many bugs to be worked out - bugs that are a direct result of issues mentioned above. Suzanne Pilsk discussed the recent Index Animalium and TL2 projects at SIL, both of which also involved BHL. She outlined how traditional librarianship (involving card cataloging and dusty volumes on shelves) was not meeting the needs of taxonomists and other researchers calling on libraries for help. But of course, libraries rose to the challenge, and SIL began digital projects for both Index Animalium and TL2, which linked the citations in these two works to the corresponding digitized texts, available via BHL. Thus, in short, our presence at ALA Midwinter 2012 was extremely successful. We shared our existence and resources with the nearly 10,000 people at the conference. We hope to host booths at future ALA events, the next of which is the ALA Annual Meeting in Anaheim, CA, 21-26 June, 2012. We hope to see you there! |
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BHL staff at Global Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Content Summit in Panama - Posted: 1/22/2012 William Ulate and I attended the Global Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Content Summit at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's facility on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama. The meetings, 17-19 January 2012, brought together a group of current and planned world-wide EOL content providers. Joining BHL at the meeting were representatives from the Atlas of Living Australia, Naturalis, INBio, CONABIO, NHM/ViBRANT, GBIF, French Institute of Pondicherry India, Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, Biological Diversity and Environment Information System (Peru), and Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory (SI GEO).
After taking a bus from Panama City to Gamboa, we boarded one of the Smithsonian boats, The Morpho, for the 90 minute trip to Barro Colorado Island. After a quick orientation to the facilities on the island, we were assigned to our dorm rooms at the field station. In keeping with the BHL camaraderie, William and I shared room (along with a fairly large spider that we gave plenty of space).
The group reassembled for a hike around BCI. We were provided with excellent guides and spent nearly 3 hours exploring. Though we didn't see some of the more charismatic megafauna of the island (Tapir, Ocelot), we were showered with attention by a troop of Howler Monkeys, spotted an Agouti, heard the calls of two species of Toucan, saw a large piliated woodpecker, many ants (including Army ants and some impressive leaf cutters). Here's an EOL Collection of some of the things we saw. As it got darker, a Tinamou posed for some photos and White Faced monkeys appeared. Oh, and there were some giant spiders. After a quick dinner in the dinning hall, we started in on the meeting. Each project represented gave a brief presentation to help the participants understand its focus. You can find mine here and William's here. The others will be posted by the EOL staff.
The first full day of meetings included an overview of the EOL activities and training on the content provider tools. In the evening, we had a social gathering on one of the verandahs where we watched some nocturnal creatures (bats, a large toad, etc.).
The final day of meetings (January 19) focused on developing content plans from the different partners as well as a discussion of EOL v.3 led by Erick Mata (EOL Executive Director).
We made some very good new contacts with our colleagues in India, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico and explored new collaborations with our partners in Europe and Australia.
Early on the morning of 20 January, we boarded the boat back to Gamboa and back to our next destinations.
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Book of the Week: The Iconic Biodiversity of Africa - Posted: 1/19/2012Africa. It is the second largest continent in the world, as well as the second most populous. It is commonly regarded to be the location in which the human species originated. It is the only continent to stretch from the northern to southern temperate zones, making it home to a wide variety of life. Furthermore, it has the largest number of megafauna species in the world (megafauna being literally "large animals," typically considered those weighing greater than 100 or 220 pounds). As such, it is home to some of the most iconic species alive today, including elephants, lions, giraffes, and gorillas. One of the most recent items added to our Flickr account is Great and Small Game of Africa (1899), and the stunning illustrations within the work have already inspired a great deal of chatter on the twitterverse. While this volume was originally written as a guide for sportsmen, much of the biodiversity knowledge we hold in written format today was supplied in part by the observations and experiences of these individuals. This volume collects as much information about the species described within as was available and practical at the time of publication and presents it in a highly accessible format. For an added element of excitement for the reader, "Many of the articles have been written in the depths of Africa itself." We present the illustrations and accompanying prose that we found most enticing. You can see all of the illustrations from this book on our Flickr account, and experience for yourself all the captivating accounts of these great fauna within the pages of the work itself.  The Rhinoceros"At present day the group is restricted to Africa and the warmer parts of Asia. In Africa it is represented by the widely-spread common or black rhinoceros ( R. bicornis [now Diceros bicornis]), the nearly extinct Burchell's, or white rhinoceros ( R. simus [now Ceratotherium simum]) of the Cape and south-eastern regions, and the little-known Holmwood's rhinoceros ( R. holmwoodi [determined to be the Black Rhinoceros in Tanzania]) of East Africa. All three are distinguished from their Asiatic relatives by their smooth skins and the absence of front teeth; and all have two horns. Burchell's rhinoceros, which is a grass-feeder, differs, however, very widely from the common species in the structure of its cheek-teeth. Holmwood's rhinoceros is at present known only by the horns and may prove not to be a distinct form."  The Zebra"The zebras (sub-genus Hippotigris), which range over the open districts south of the Sahara, and are peculiar to Africa, differ from the asses in that at least the head and fore-part of the body are striped; the stripes in some cases extending over the whole animal. Four well-marked species may be recognised, viz.:- the quagga ( E. quagga quagga [extinct subspecies of E. quagga]), now extinct, Burchell's zebra ( E. burchelli), Grevy's zebra ( E. grevyi), and the true or mountain zebra ( E. zebra). Of the second of these at least seven more or less well-marked local races or sub-species may be distinguished, differing from one another in the arrangement of the stripes on the body, the presence or absence of intermediate 'shadow-stripes,' and the extent to which the striping extends on to the legs."  The Koodoo"Koodoo, the name by which one of the most beautiful animals in the whole world is known to European sportsmen, must be, I think, a word of Hottentot origin, since it is not Dutch, nor does it at all resemble any of the many equivalents for the same animal used by the various Bantu tribes inhabiting South and South Central Africa. This splendid antelope was once widely distributed through the southern portion of the African continent. Two conditions are necessary to its existence - water and bush...And wherever in South Africa these two conditions were fulfilled - with the single exception of the forests of Knysna - I believe that koodoos were once to be found. In the early part of the present century, koodoos were numerous in many parts of the eastern province of the Cape Colony, but they had become exceedingly rare in those districts at the date of my first visit to South Africa in 1871. Since that time, thanks to wise legislation on the part of the Cape Government, and the loyal support given to the gamelaws by the British and Dutch farmers, koodoos have lately very much increased in numbers in some of their old haunts within that territory."  The Giraffe"These animals are very difficult of approach, in a general way, for they are extremely keen-sighted, and their towering height enables them to command a wide view...I do not think that lions very often succeed in killing these animals, defenceless though they be; and when they do, I believe it is generally a solitary giraffe (individuals of either sex are often seen alone) that has been surprised and pulled down by a party of lions. Tick-birds - the same that so generally accompany the rhinoceros - often visit them, and it is curious to see these little guests running up and down their long necks, clinging to their sides and bellies, or sitting contentedly upon their heads while emitting their soft, querulous chirruping. I have never heard giraffes make any sound, nor have I heard or read anywhere that their cry, if they have one, has ever been noticed." |
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BHL and Our Users: Dr. Kanchi Gandhi - Posted: 1/17/2012 This week, we feature a colleague who combs the botanical literature for new plant names, determines their validity and contributes them to the International Plant Name Index (IPNI). Meet Dr. Kanchi Gandhi, who has been recognized by the American Association of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) for his countless pieces of nomenclatural advice provided to taxonomists worldwide and for keeping classical expertise in the practice of taxonomy alive. What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest?I have been the Senior Nomenclatural Registrar at the Harvard University Herbaria (HUH) in Cambridge, MA since 1995. I compile New World plant names for the IPNI and manage the HUH authority files for generic names, authors’ names, and publication titles. My interests are in the areas of plant nomenclature, plant morphology, and plant taxonomy. How long have you been in your field of study? I began my first botanical project in 1970 as a scientific assistant at St. Joseph College in Bangalore, India, working on a survey of local flora in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. That is how I met Smithsonian botanist, Dan Nicolson, with whom I continued to work with for nearly 40 years. I taught plant taxonomy at The National College, Bangalore. I was awarded a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1989.
When did you first discover BHL? The Harvard botany librarians introduced me to BHL in 2005. What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research? I use it to consult materials that are not in our library and it is especially useful to me when my library is closed. I use it for the many reference questions that come to me to verify plant names and associated data. BHL is also very useful in communicating with international colleagues who cannot access Google-scanned material. How often do you use BHL? Every day, nearly 365 days a year! How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Select Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.)? I primarily use it as an online resource and refer others to it by forwarding URLs. What are your favorite features/services on BHL? The new search page works very well, especially for finding scientific names. If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?I would prefer to have a simpler way to download a page or a segment of a page as one can do via the Real Jardín Botánico site or via the page delivery service (PDS) in Harvard’s online catalog, HOLLIS. If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why? In my case the digitization of early Indian floras would be very useful. Conclusion: Thank you, Dr. Gandhi, for giving us a brief glimpse into your work and use of the BHL! It is exciting to hear from one of our users that has taken advantage of BHL since its inception. We are constantly working to improve our user interface, and your comments about improving ease of download is valuable feedback for our developers. To learn more about Dr. Gandhi, visit his webpage. |
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BHL and EOL at ALA Midwinter 2012! - Posted: 1/12/2012 The American Library Association's 2012 Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, Texas, is just around the corner. January 20th-24th, thousands of librarians and other interested parties will descend upon the city to participate in the five day conference focused on everything you could possibly want to talk about regarding libraries. For more information about the conference, visit the ALA Midwinter 2012 website. With the prospect of such an appropriate audience gathered in one place, we at BHL, along with our friends at Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to share a little bit about BHL and EOL with the rest of the world. How so? By hosting a booth at the conference. The booth (booth number 1157), which will be open beginning at 5:30pm, Friday, Jan. 20th, until 2:00pm, Monday, Jan. 23rd, will be manned by various members of the BHL and EOL staff, all of whom will be ready and waiting to answer any questions or engage in any conversations you might have about either project, or the broader digital landscape in general. We'll also be live demoing both websites ( BHL and EOL), showcasing our fabulous Flickr site, and handing out some great swag, including buttons, pens, brochures, business cards, and more. Plus, we'll be holdings raffles for even more snazzy things, including tote bags and tumblers. Oh, and of course, there will be candy! So, to recap, if you're going to be at ALA Midwinter next week, stop by the BHL and EOL booth. And if you're not going to ALA, well, now that you know we are, you're making your travel plans, right? ;-) - What? BHL and EOL booth at ALA Midwinter, Dallas, TX, Jan. 20th-24th (For more information on the booth, click here and search under "E" for Encyclopedia of Life/Biodiversity Heritage Library)
- Where? Exhibit Hall, Booth #1157
- When? Booth will be open from 5:30pm, Friday, Jan. 20th - 2:00pm, Monday, Jan. 23rd (see exhibit site for more details on hours)
- Why? Learn all about BHL and EOL with your chance to ask questions of staff, engage in lively conversations, and view live demos of the sites and affiliated content. Plus, we'll be handing out great free stuff! Don't miss it!
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My Life as a BHL Staffer - Posted: 1/9/2012 To kick off the new year, we here at BHL are starting a new monthly series titled "My Life as a BHL Staffer." Each month, we will showcase a different BHL staff member and give an overview of what tasks and duties that person performs. We kick off the series with me, Gilbert Borrego, BHL staff member from the Smithsonian Institution. While I have a lot of different duties to perform for BHL, I can group them into three main areas: Social Media (which includes Flickr and Facebook), the pagination of BHL materials, and lastly, the pulling and returning of the physical items that will be scanned and eventually show up on BHL. I’ll start with the fan favorite: BHL Flickr: The goal of having a BHL Flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/sets/) is to have a means to showcase BHL content in a new and fun way. We want to supply a pool of image content for dissemination through multiple social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and for other potential BHL projects. We also use it to provide BHL content to the Encyclopedia of Life (http://eol.org) as part of their practice to automatically pull images from Flickr to include on EOL taxon pages. Lastly, we want to use it a way to connect with you, the BHL and Flickr communities! We started making a real concerted effort to populate and utilize Flickr in July 2011 and it just took off! I usually choose the items that I want to post on Flickr based on what items come across my desk, looking at items on the BHL recent addition feed (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Recent.aspx), or doing keyword searches on BHL (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/). I look for the most visually stunning, interesting or intricate plates that I can find. I download all the images from an item, one image at a time. 
Believe me, the two monitor set up is necessary!
I then upload them into Adobe Bridge which enables me to attach the all important metadata to all of the images. The metadata includes the filename, the creator, the source, descriptive information, keywords, credits, and copyright information. After that, I upload the whole batch to the BHL Flickr page and assign it to various categories including the contributing institution, the classification of the animals or plants pictured, and whether the item was used as a Book of the Week for this blog. 
Beautiful, huh? :)
We also provide BHL content to the Encyclopedia of Life (http://eol.org). Images from our Flickr page are added to EOL when tagged with the proper machine tags with scientific names. You can learn more about machine tags here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life/rules/ And guess what? YOU can add machine tags to our images too! In fact, we would love for some assistance in getting even more of our images into EOL! Learn how to do it with this snazzy tutorial: http://www.slideshare.net/eoleducation/eol-flickr-tutorial We currently have over 22,000 images on Flickr and will continue to keep adding more and more! If you know of any items in BHL with images that are screaming to be added to Flickr, please let us know via FlickrMail or leave us some feedback (feedback@biodiversitylibrary.org). I also post everyday on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Biodiversity-Heritage-Library/63547246565 We typically provide news and information that would be of potential interest to our Facebook followers. We try to change up the look of our page when we can, which means changing the profile picture often. Most importantly, we try to engage our users by being as interactive as we can. We love replying to comments and questions, so please be active and participate on our quizzes and make plenty of comments about anything we post! Pulling and Returning Items: SIL’s scanning process begins with the selection of material to scan. Material is selected for scanning based on three key areas: content identified by the systematic scanning of a biodiversity discipline topic (i.e. Entomology, Ornithology, Botany, etc.), institutional publications, and content identified through BHL’s issue tracking system, called Gemini, which includes user-submitted feedback. You can submit a scan request (or any other type of question or feedback here: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Feedback.aspx Staff members work to resolve this feedback by assigning them to various BHL institutions to address. We also have a system in place that helps to help make sure different institutions do not scan the same items. Once items have been selected for scanning, I will retrieve the items from the appropriate library branch which are located throughout the Smithsonian Natural History Museum building. Once the items have been scanned and the books are sent back to us, I review the quality of the scans by performing a statistical sampling of books from the shipment or scanning batch. The process of quality assessment can be time consuming as it involves clicking through the scanned page images while turning the physical pages of the book at the same time. However, it is very important that we provide high quality scans that are not missing pages or that have pages that are cut off. After the assessment, the items are checked back in and reshelved. 
Yikes, that is a lot of books! Pagination: Pagination is the process of dividing our content into discrete pages in order to more easily find the information researchers need to help them do their work in a timely manner without having to search for information page by page. Basically, pagination includes indicating things such as page numbers, volume and issue numbers, tables of content, indices, identifying plates and figures and anything else to make searching through online items easy and quick. My position requires me to do quite a bit of pagination as it is an important component to using BHL for research. In the end, I want to make something that looks like this... 
...to look a little more like this. 
My pagination work screen looks like this: 
I can manipulate multiple items at one time by checking the appropriate boxes, (for example, finding and checkmarking all the plates and have them numbering sequentially). If this looks like it takes a long time, it does! I have to look at every single page to verify what it is and give it the correct information. An item may take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, and certain series may take WEEKS, so be patient with us! :) Seriously, we are looking at various ways to make the pagination process more automated, but for now, we have to manually manipulate each page. We prioritize pagination based on requests from users and we try to finish them up as soon as we can. So, if you know of an item in BHL that you would like paginated, please let us know (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/Feedback.aspx). We will be happy to do it, just give us a little time to get it done. Well, that is a very brief and simplified description of what I do for BHL. Hopefully it was both interesting and informative! You would not believe how hardworking and committed every BHL staffer is and how committed everybody is to this ambitious project and I am still amazed that I get to play a role in it! Be sure to look out for our next BHL member profile next month and learn more about us! |
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Book of the Week: Celebrating that Delightful Fungus Known as the Mushroom - Posted: 1/5/2012Paddestoel. Krötenschwamm. Fliegenpilz. Krötenstuhl. Mousseron. Frogge Stole. Paddocstol. Toadstool. What do all of these words have in common? They are all various names that have been applied to mushrooms over the centuries. Today, we're celebrating these curious, tasty, and sometimes deadly organisms with our book of the week, Nouvel Atlas de Poche des Champignons Comestibles et Vénéneux, (1911-12), v. 1. Fungi never looked as good as it does in the illustrations in this little gem...except, of course, perhaps between two pieces of bread at dinner last night...
The term "mushroom" refers to the "fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus." "Mushroom" is most often applied to fungi with a stem, cap, and gills or pores, though it can also be more universally applied to fungi of the Phylum Ascomycota, or "Sac Fungi," which are often woody or leathery in appearance.
The identification of mushrooms is a skill that takes many forms, from traditional methods including odors, tastes, colors, habitats, and seasons of occurrence, to more modern methods involving molecular investigation. A perhaps more interesting technique, however, involves mushroom spores. Mushrooms reproduce via spores, which are produced from basidia in the gills on the underside of a mushroom cap. These spores fall from the cap, and as a result, if the mushroom cap is cut from the stem and placed on a piece of paper overnight, the resulting pattern from the residue of falling spores, reflecting the shape of the gills themselves, will aid in identification of the species. Such patterns are referred to as "Spore Prints."
Mushrooms play a large role in the cuisine of cultures all across the globe, particularly in the foods of China, Korea, Europe and Japan. China, in fact, is the world's leading producer of edible mushrooms. The most popular commercially-grown species is Agaricus bisporus, which includes the well-known Portobello variety. However, despite their popularity as food, there are a number of toxic species, and telling the harmless from the harmful can be difficult as there is no universally-held trait among all poisonous or non-poisonous varieties. Even those species deemed non-poisonous can produce mild to severe allergic reactions in some individuals. As another concern for European varieties, since mushrooms are capable of absorbing heavy materials, many specimens in Europe may still be contaminated from the Chernobyl disaster.
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BHL and Our Users: Aaron Sims - Posted: 1/3/2012 This week, we feature a rare plant botanist for the California Native Plant Society whose first words after discovering BHL for the first time were "this is amazing!" We thrive on these incredible moments of serendipitous discovery we so often hear about from our users, and we're proud to share one of them with you today in our feature on botanist Aaron Sims!
What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest? I am the Rare Plant Botanist for the California Native Plant Society (CNPS), and manage the Rare Plant Program and Online Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants of California (Inventory). In addition to rare plants and field botany, my areas of interest are photography, kayaking, hiking, and pretty much anything involving the outdoors. How long have you been in your field of study? My love for the plant sciences started in college after having some very influential and knowledgeable botany teachers that were always enthusiastic and charismatic about the subject, in addition to genuinely caring about their students. Then after taking David Keil’s field botany class at Cal Poly State University in 2005, it was clear to me that botany is where I belong, and I assisted with David’s class until 2010, over three years after I had already graduated. In 2007 I began working for California State Parks on the Central Coast where I performed rare plant and vegetation surveys, in addition to various other tasks pertaining to natural resources. Then after completing the Atlas of Sensitive Species of the Morro Bay Area in 2010 (available at: www.mbnep.org/library), I moved to Sacramento and started working for CNPS. When did you first discover BHL? I first discovered BHL sometime in 2010 while researching plants for the Inventory. When a plant needs to be evaluated for inclusion, deletion, or change in rarity status in the Inventory, we initially start contacting people that may have knowledge on the subject taxon and immediately begin an in-depth research through various web resources. BHL came up through one of my searches for the original description of a rare plant taxon, and was the only site that had the actual full original description available for immediate download in PDF format. Awesome! I am pretty sure I exclaimed “this is amazing!” out loud as soon I discovered BHL, and I immediately bookmarked it in my browser. What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research? BHL is an excellent resource that regularly helps the CNPS Rare Plant Program obtain original descriptions for plants during their review and assessment for inclusion/change/deletion in the Inventory. I feel so privileged to be working in a day in age when such resources are so readily available and easy to obtain. As a non-profit society, CNPS doesn’t have sufficient funds to subscribe to online journal databases, nor the time or resources to physically seek out every historical reference regarding rare plants in the Inventory. BHL helps fill this void by providing such resources free and readily available to the public. How often do you use BHL? The CNPS Rare Plant Program uses BHL weekly, if not nearly daily while drafting status reviews for changes in the Inventory. How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Selecting Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.) We typically use BHL to download whole PDFs that include the entire original description for plants that are being evaluated for the Inventory. What are your favorite features/services on BHL? The search functions are simple, accurate, and easy to use. Furthermore, I like the check boxes that accompany a scientific journal which allows one to easily click through subfolders of years, volumes, and issues while still showing the parent directory. If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next? Perhaps an obvious and routine task, but adding more references is greatly desired. If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why? I cannot choose one title of higher impact over another. All scientific journals and references that include botanical information, contain original plant descriptions, or any other pertinent information on plants we review for the Inventory are invaluable to the CNPS Rare Plant Program. Thank you for providing such an important resource and keep up the good work! |
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Celebrating the Life and Contributions of Charles Davies Sherborn - Posted: 12/22/2011 On October 28, 2011, the ICZN (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature), in collaboration with the Society for the History of Natural History and others, hosted a symposium at the Natural History Museum, London, "Anchoring Biodiversity Information: From Sherborn to the 21st century and beyond,” honoring the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Davies Sherborn. Sherborn, 1861-1942, played a critical role in the biodiversity world by being the first to successfully index every living or extinct animal discovered and documented between 1758 and 1850. His greatest work, Index Animalium, took over 43 years to complete but is still referred to by taxonomist around the world. The one-day event, held at the Flett Theatre at the Natural History Museum, London, celebrated the incredible achievements of Sherborn and the ramifications for taxonomic research yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Several BHL-affiliated staff members presented at the symposium, including BHL Technical Director Chris Freeland and Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ (SIL) staff member and BHL metadata guru Suzanne Pilsk. SIL staff members Grace Costantino (Digital Collections Librarian for BHL) and Leslie Overstreet (Curator of the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library at SIL, from which many BHL rare books have been scanned) also presented a poster at the event.
Chris Freeland’s presentation (pictured above) at the symposium, entitled “Approaches to preserving digitized taxonomic data: prints, manuscripts, specimens,” addressed methodologies for responsible curation of digitized prints, manuscripts, and specimens, and outlined best practices for safeguarding digitized taxonomic data to ensure longevity of resources. Such discussions are timely, as the availability of digitized taxonomic data has increased dramatically over the past twenty years as a result of increased support from national funding agencies and the declining cost of scanning devices. As such, natural history museums and libraries have taken on new responsibilities for managing electronic information as ways of providing enhanced opportunities for educational outreach and scholarly dissemination. Museums and libraries have to consider how best to create and care for electronic resources given a volatile technology landscape with rapidly changing file formats and display devices.
SIL’s Suzanne Pilsk explained the role Smithsonian Libraries has played in bringing the critical work Index Animalium out of the library and off the page with a talk titled “Unlocking the Index Animalium: From paper slips to bytes and bits” (pictured above). Pilsk represented the work done to date by SIL staff, interns and volunteers to create an online version of the work. Smithsonian Libraries’ goal was to provide better access to the Index than was previously available and connect the researcher to the level of information needed. Over the span of years, staff has evolved the project from the initial vision of discovering where the text was located within the library walls, to linking to the scanned text via BHL. 
Finally, the poster presented by Grace Costantino and Leslie Overstreet, entitled “Online Synergy: Sherborn’s Index Animalium and the Biodiversity Heritage Library,” delved into the link between SIL’s online version of Index Animalium and the digitized volumes within BHL. SIL’s online version of the Index Animalium allows researchers to search the entire multi-volume work by name, epithet, or other keyword. With the citation thus provided, researchers can then access the cited text itself on BHL, finding not only the species citation but, in many cases, remarkable illustrations as well. The talks and posters from the symposium can be viewed here, and to find out more about the incredible life of Charles Davies Sherborn, take a look at the feature on him and the symposium in The Telegraph. You can also view photos from the event on Flickr. |
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BHL and Our Users: Gil Taylor - Posted: 12/20/2011 Ever wondered how BHL decides what to scan? There are a variety of avenues that staff use to select titles for digitization, including scan requests submitted by users, BHL member publications and subject strengths, botany and zoology priority titles, in-copyright titles for which BHL has received permission to scan, and titles identified by BHL staff members as important biodiversity works. To accomplish the latter, the librarians at various BHL institutions play a key role. Their expertise and interaction with library patrons ideally situates them to inform collection development for the BHL project.
This week, we feature one of these individuals, Gil Taylor, librarian at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. He regularly uses day-to-day work within the library and conversations with patrons to suggest important works for BHL to digitize, and his enthusiasm for and promotion of the project ensures that anyone coming into contact with the Smithsonian Libraries is made aware of the wealth of information available within the BHL collection.
What is your title and institutional affiliation? I’m assistant department head at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s Natural and Physical Sciences department. Recently I have been overseeing the Entomology and Invertebrate Zoology (IZ) libraries at the NMNH, along with Museum Support Center Library, in Suitland, MD. I have been at the SIL since 1990. How long have you been working in a library environment? Nearly 30 years. Before coming to SIL, I worked full time in a number of libraries and technical services at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I also received my MLS in 1989. I came aboard in the library world just as the OPAC was superseding the card catalog, and to me it was particularly interesting, especially as you could access the catalog remotely. I felt like I was cutting-edge back in the 1980’s as I was the only one in my library school cataloging class who typed up sample cards using an Apple II and a dot matrix printer instead of using a typewriter. When did you first discover BHL? I feel as if I witnessed its birth, as it grew out of SIL’s Biologia Centrali-Americana project. What is your current level of involvement in BHL? I serve on SIL’s BHL Task Force and try to identify needs BHL can fill for our researchers. I was very happy to be on board with BHL as the Entomology and IZ Libraries here were among the first SIL libraries to be “harvested” for BHL. But, I primarily I see myself as a BHL evangelist, taking every opportunity to expound on what a great, quality non-profit effort It is. I believe it’s utterly central to the librarian ethos to make every effort to share the knowledge you’re charged with curating. What is your opinion of BHL and what impact has it had on your duties as a librarian? From a front-line reference librarian perspective, it has been a real boon. Our staff members sometimes take particular delight in responding to ILL queries for our materials by pointing to their availability in BHL. Not having to painstakingly copy materials, sometimes from old volumes with fragile bindings, is a huge time-saver. How often do you use BHL? When doing reference work, almost every day. What has been the reaction of your patrons to BHL? I remember the initial skepticism from staff and users that the image quality of scans would not be good enough for serious taxonomic identification work. When users know they have access to original scans in a very lossless format, I have rarely come across a patron who was dissatisfied with what they have downloaded from BHL. For older curators and volunteers, their first time in utilizing BHL can seem almost magical in its instant gratification. What services/features do you like most about BHL and which do you most like to point out to your patrons? Which services/features are your patrons most excited about/use the most often? There is no one specific feature that I point out routinely, but I emphasize to patrons that because BHL is nearly a grass-roots effort, all suggestions and feedback for its improvement are taken seriously and can really make a difference. We can clearly see this, for example, as BHL continually tweaks its UI. Compare this to attempting to get the attention of a vast information services conglomerate. If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next? I think some work needs to be done on correcting OCR, as this can be a problem when exporting content to mobile platforms. One researcher here recently inquired about how to access BHL content on an iPad while he is in a deep-sea submersible. I think I (and others) would like to have the ability to upload a list of citations from a researcher and have BHL automatically link to corresponding content. This seems almost like a science fiction fantasy for a librarian, but I think it is within the reach of developers. The BLE virtual exhibition of BHL content that BHL-Europe is experimenting with seems like a terrific way to package and serve content in literally spicy, creative ways. This is the customized library subject guide of the future. As I also answer or direct public e-mail queries at SIL, I see a lot of requests for images. Further indexing of images through pattern recognition, etc. could dramatically widen the BHL’s audience. Is there a specific item on BHL that is most often requested by your patrons/that you use more than any other to fulfill ILL requests? For the public, but also from SI researchers, the mostly 19th century, legacy Smithsonian-published materials (annual reports/bulletins of the USNM, Bureau of Ethnology, etc.) are particularly popular. ____________________________ Thank you, Gil, for all the work you do for BHL and for the critical contributions you make to the development and dissemination of the project. And we send a special thanks to all our librarian colleagues who make BHL run like such a well-oiled machine! |
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Book of the Week: Big Cats Week! - Posted: 12/15/2011 This week is Big Cats Week, and to celebrate we're featuring a book in our collection that has some of the loveliest engravings of these majestic felines that we've ever seen. The book, Engravings of Lions, Tigers, Panthers, Leopards, Dogs, etc. (1853), by Thomas Landseer, contains 39 plates. The first twenty - of lions, tigers, panthers, and leopards - are engravings by Thomas Landseer after original works by Stubbs, Rubens, Spilsbury, Rembrant, Reydinger, and Edwin Landseer. We hope you enjoy these marvelous works, and for each of the species depicted, we've included some interesting facts and links to the animals in EOL, where you can learn even more about them. Be sure to check out Big Cats Week on the National Geographic website, and you can follow the discussion on twitter ( BHL account - @BioDivLibrary) with the hashtag #bigcatsweek. And remember, you can see all of the illustrations from this work on our Flickr account.  Lion- Second largest living cat
- The tallest of all living cats
- Until about 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread mammal after humans, with ranges including Africa, Europe, Asia and even the Americas
- Usually, eight subspecies of lions are recognized
- Lions can be bred with tigers, leopards, and panthers, producing, respectively, ligers, leopons, and jaglions
- The only member of the cat family to display obvious sexual dimorphism (with the manes on males)
 Tiger
- The largest of all cat species
- The longest canine teeth among living felids
- Six living recognized subspecies
- The subspecies of tigers are the most varied in size of any cat species. The Siberian, Bengal and Caspian are the largest living felids and some of the largest to ever live. While males of these varieties can weigh between 600-670 pounds, the smallest tiger subspecies, the Sumatran, weighs only 170-310 pounds.
- The South China Tiger subspecies is listed as one of the 10 most critically endangered animals in the world, and indeed may already be extinct in the wild.
 Panther (Jaguar or Cougar)
- The panther may refer to the leopard in Africa and Asia, the cougar in North America, or the jaguar in Central and South America.
- The jaguar resembles the leopard physically but is larger
- The jaguar has an exceptionally powerful bite, crushing the skulls of prey to deliver a "death-bite" to the brain
- The mountain lion, cougar, or puma, native to the Americas, has the largest range of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere
- The cougar is closer genetically to the domestic cat than true lions
 Leopard
- The smallest of the four big cats (lion, tiger, jaguar and leopard)
- It is chiefly found in sub-Saharan Africa, though small populations can be found in Asia
- Both leopards and jaguars that are completely black are known as black panthers
- There are nine recognized subspecies of leopards
- The Amur Leopard, one of the nine subspecies, is considered one of the rarest felids in the world, with only approximately 30-35 individuals in the wild
- The Arabian Leopard is the smallest leopard subspecies
- The Persian Leopard is the largest leopard subspecies
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Support BHL this Holiday Season - Posted: 12/13/2011 It's December, and the holiday season is upon us! Neighborhoods are basking in a many-colored glow cast by light strands hung by the mile, stores have stocked their shelves with every gift and festive item imaginable, and a general atmosphere of good cheer hangs in the air. As you think about buying gifts for your loved ones this season, consider giving a gift to BHL as well.
To date, we've scanned over 36 million pages for BHL, but that scanning doesn't happen by magic. It takes dozens of dedicated staff members and generous financial resources provided by grants, endowments, and donations contributed by the public. We believe in the work we do, and the success of our donations button and the continuous praise we receive for BHL shows us that you do too!
We have a dream to digitize all available taxonomic literature and make it freely available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. During an era in world history where three-quarters of climate change is manmade, it is vital that the critical knowledge held within the legacy literature be made available to scientists, researchers, conservationists, and the public at large so that we can make intelligent decisions to save global biodiversity for generations to come. Without the generous support of grants and donations, this dream will be very difficult to realize.
 So, as you brave the malls, overcrowded parking lots, and perhaps over-zealous shoppers, keep BHL in your thoughts. Making a donation to BHL is much simpler than tackling the challenges of department store shopping. All you have to do is click on the "Donate" button located at the top of the BHL website. All donations are tax-deductible, and the easy donation interface allows your to contribute any amount you desire. No gift is too small, and all will contribute to the strengthening and expanding of BHL. Learn more about the BHL donate button in our previous blog post.
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer |
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Book of the Week: Welcome to the Orchid Family, Bulbophyllum nocturnum! - Posted: 12/8/2011 While there are many species of plants that flower at night, and among those are many orchids, scientists researching in New Britain just discovered the only orchid species that flowers exclusively at night. Meet Bulbophyllum nocturnum, discovered by Ed de Vogel during a field trip to the lowland rainforest of the island, which is located near Papua New Guinea.
Dr. de Vogel, after taking a specimen of the plant home to the Netherlands with him, discovered that it only flowers a few hours after dusk and closes a few hours after sunrise. While this is a remarkable discovery, the purpose for the flower's nocturnal preference remains a mystery. According to Andre Schuiteman, a co-author of the paper detailing the find, which was published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, "related species are pollinated by tiny flies that think they are visiting fungi," with the smell and physical appearance of the flower appearing like fungus in the eyes of the insect. The insects visit the flower searching for a place to lay their eggs and unwittingly pollinate it. There is a strong possibility that a night-foraging fly species may thus be the pollinator of B. nocturnum and the reason for its unique behavior.
The authors of the paper stipulate that it will take much more research before some of the questions surrounding this species are answered. These are questions best answered in the field. However, as the BBC article (from which this information comes) articulates, examining the flower in the wild may be difficult in the future. The orchid was discovered in a previously-inaccessible portion of the island, which, thanks to recent roads constructed for the purposes of logging, has only lately been opened up for scientific discovery. While the logging thus made the find itself possible, it also threatens the long-term survival of the species. Schuiteman affirmed that it is necessary for the local government to protect the habitat of the species from the potential damages caused by logging.
To celebrate the discovery of our new orchid friend, for this week's book of the week we're featuring a book full of stunning orchid illustrations. Abbildungen der in Deutschland und den Angrenzenden Gebieten Vorkommenden Grundformen der Orchideenarten (1904), by Friedrich Kränzlin, features 60 gorgeous plates by Walter Müller. While of course Bulbophyllum nocturnum is too new to science to be included in this work, we're happy to know that future publications will highlight this species just as beautifully as this book does for the species included within its pages.
For our post, we're featuring some of our favorite illustrations from the work. You can enjoy all of the images from this title on our Flickr site, which now has over 21,000 natural history images. Hopefully one day we'll be able to pull in an illustration of Bulbophyllum nocturnum as well!
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BHL Staff Meeting Success - Posted: 12/7/2011 Just after the Life and Literature conference, on Wednesday November 16, members of the BHL Staff got together to talk about day-to-day BHL issues. It was a rare and wonderful opportunity for this highly distributed staff to meet in person. Staff members were present from most of the BHL Consortium Member Institutions, now 14 members strong!
If you missed the announcement from the Life and Literature Conference, BHL has welcomed two new members to its consortium, Cornell University Library and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Libraries. More information about BHL's newest members will be posted soon.
BHL Staff met to discuss the new ideas resulting from the Life and Literature conference as well as issues related to governance, social media, scanning workflow and technical development. Of note on the agenda was a discussion on how to solve the issue of integrating more "boutique" scanning projects into the current workflow. To date, the BHL has scanned and incorporated content into its collection mainly through two standard workflows, with scanning partners the Internet Archive and the Missouri Botanical Garden's Botanicus Digital Library project. Staff shared with each other about new processes under development to help tackle the not-so-insignificant issue of incorporating content into the collection scanned through alternate workflows.
With new BHL members, new workflows and new ideas resulting from the Life and Literature conference, BHL Staff activities are entering some very exciting and dynamic times ahead. Stay tuned for more updates as 2012 unfolds. Onward and upward we go! |
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BHL and Our Users: Dr. Thomas Carefoot - Posted: 12/6/2011 After a short break during which we featured various posts related to the Life and Literature conference, we again resume our BHL and Our User series, kicking things off again with Dr. Thomas Carefoot, a marine biologist and the author of the delightful educational website on west-coast marine invertebrates, A Snail's Odyssey. What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest? I am retired from a 35-year teaching and research position in marine biology at the University of British Columbia, Canada. My research specialties include the study of a group of marine snails known as sea hares, and I have sought them out in many tropical areas of the world. I am well versed on invertebrate marine life, most notably on the Pacific west coast, but also throughout the Caribbean, Indo- Pacific, and other tropical areas. I enjoy talking and lecturing about marine invertebrates, and a few years before retirement was awarded the University’s prestigious Master Teacher Award. I have written 2 books on marine ecology, authored some 90 research papers, and have recently produced a large educational website on west-coast marine invertebrates called A Snail's Odyssey. I am currently working on an equally large educational website called the Biology of Caribbean Coral Reefs. How long have you been in your field of study? For over 50 years, from commencement of an Honours BSc programme at the University of British Columbia (UBC), leading to an MSc degree at the same institution, and followed by a doctorate at the University of Wales, all in the field of marine biology. My first job was at the Marine Sciences Centre, McGill University, followed by an appointment to the Zoology Department at UBC in 1969. As part of the McGill experience was one year’s appointment as Director of the Bellairs Research Institute in Barbados. In total, I have spent about 3 years in the Caribbean, have visited all but a handful of the major islands, and have SCUBA-dived on most Caribbean reef systems. When did you first discover BHL? Several years ago when I first started researching scientific articles on west-coast marine invertebrates for my website A Snails' Odyssey. What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research? BHL provides an excellent service for studies of marine and other biodiversity. However, as my research interests are not in biodiversity per se, I use the service only for accessing pertinent literature on west-coast and coral-reef marine invertebrates for inclusion in my educational websites. How often do you use BHL? About once a week. How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Selecting Pages to Download for a custom PDF/etc.) For downloading articles from journals. What are your favorite features/services on BHL? The only one that I have regularly used is the PDF downloading privilege. If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next? I would streamline the system for downloading PDFs. It is currently time-consuming and “out of synch” with similar accessing systems for other scientific journals. For example, the journal I most access at BHL is the Journal of Shellfish Research (JSR), which is presently most easily “downloadable” as entire volumes. It would be a relatively easy job to split each volume into its component research papers, format these as PDFs, and have an accessing system along the lines of other journal publishers. I realize that JSR is just one of the many journals in the BHL, but it would be a start. Thank you, Dr. Carefoot, for sharing your experience and resources with us! Be sure to check out A Snails' Odyssey, which chronicles the whimsical story of an upper intertidal snail who, finding himself mistakenly cast into the deep waters of the ocean, slowly but steadily makes his way back home to shallower waters. Along the way he encounters many different marine species, which offer a plethora of opportunities for discovery for both the snail and the reader. For each species, there is a short cartoon animation meant to give a light-hearted introduction to the animal, and a scientific Learnabout, which offers more in-depth information, including summaries of a multitude of scientific papers written about the invertebrates. It's a fun, educational site for all ages. |
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| Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 5 - Posted: 12/2/2011 |
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| Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 4 - Posted: 12/1/2011 |
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| Life and Literature Conference Attendee Interviews: Part 3 - Posted: 11/30/2011 |
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