Post on 20-Jan-2017
transcript
BHL Australia2015-2016
Nicole KearneyCoordinator BHL Australia
@nicolekearney @bhl_au
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Biodiversity Heritage Library
The world’s largest online repository for biodiversity heritage and archival materials.
www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biological Literature
accessible & discoverable
Making our
Digitising our biodiversity literature
A synopsis of the Birds of Australia and the adjacent islands, John Gould, 1837.
Museum libraries are not usually open to the public, but occasionally treasures such as this are put on display in exhibitions. This beautiful volume by John Gould was featured in Museum Victoria’s recent “Art of Science” exhibition, but visitors to the exhibition were only able to view this single double-page spread.
Now that we have put it online, anyone in the world can turn these beautiful pages.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
50+ MILLIONpages
188,000+ 220+volumes contributors
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/bhlau
The Naturalist's Miscellany, or Coloured figures Of natural objects, Vol. 10, George Shaw, 1799.
The first published description of the Duck-billed Platypus
“Of all the Mammalia yet known it seems the most extraordinary…
…at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some deceptive preparation by artificial means.”
Information on 170+ million species
BHL Australia (2011)
168,306pages
792volumes
Museum Victoria
Australian Museum
(University of Otago)
Western Australian Museum
(University of Tasmania)
Queensland Museum
(Western Australian Herbarium)
South Australian Museum
GeoScience Australia
BHL-Australia
Royal Botanic Gardens VIC
20152016
Biological Literature
accessible & discoverable
Making our
REALLY
Biodiversity Heritage Library website
Taxonomic name recognition(searchable)
Optical character
recognition (searchable)
Links
Click on Link to View Page
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/bhlau
Australian journals on BHL
More on: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/bhlau
Gap-filling
Extending
Linking
In-copyright Material & License Agreements
x8 Australian agreements thus far…
Content curation – BHL Collections
Content curation – BHL Collections
Antarctic Exploration & Discovery
111 volumes from 46 titles, containing 40625 pages
First descriptions & illustrations @bhl_au
#PageFrights @bhl_au
#ColourOurCollections @bhl_au
Our online community (BHL users)
5.5+ MILLIONTotal unique users to date
Average monthly unique users (CY16)
98,000+
10+ MILLIONTotal website visits to date
Average monthly visits (CY16)175,000+
243 Countries & Territories
*Stats as of September 2016
Australian visits: 65,812
@bhl_au 460+ followers
10,500+ followers
10,700+ followers
24,000+ followers
Making
Scientific Artworkaccessible & discoverable
Common name
Scientific name
Location
Source library
Tagged = discoverable
Common name
Scientific name
Location
Source library
Tagged = discoverable (citizen scientists)
Original scientific nametaxonomy:bionomial=
Artist nameartist:name=
Accepted scientific nametaxonomy:bionomial=
Machine-readable tags
Common nametaxonomy:common=
Common name
Scientific name
Location
Source library
Tagged = discoverable (citizen scientists)
Original scientific nametaxonomy:bionomial=
Artist nameartist:name=
Accepted scientific nametaxonomy:bionomial=
Machine-readable tags
Common nametaxonomy:common=
Common name
Scientific name
Location
Source library
Tagged = discoverable
Original scientific nametaxonomy:bionomial=
Artist nameartist:name=
Accepted scientific nametaxonomy:bionomial=
Machine-readable tags
Common nametaxonomy:common=
Locationgeo:country=
AUSTRALIA
Rhycherus filamentosus
Making
Field Diariesaccessible & discoverable
Why are field diaries so important?
Field diaries are full of
DATAanimals plant
s
fossils
weather
habitats
DATE: 26 September 1948
OBSERVATIONS
LOCATION:Lake Corangamite
DATE: 26 September 1948
OBSERVATIONS
LOCATION:Lake Corangamite
BEHAVIOUR: nesting
SILVER GULLS (26.9.48)
300 nests on 1 island
15 islands of similar size
Estimates 4500 nests
Nesting success~ 1.5 eggs/nest
=7000 new gulls from this year from this locality
Our scientists need this data!
Images: Heath Warwick & Nicole Kearney / Museum Victoria
19312012 2014
Grampians National Park
Our scientists need this data!
Images: Heath Warwick & Nicole Kearney / Museum Victoria
2012 2014• Past species
distribution & abundance
• Future biological surveys
• Threatened & pest species management
A historic baseline for climate change research
Underutilised resource
Inaccessible in their current state
• single hard copy• single location• hand-written (in the field)• historic scripts• unsearchable• uncatalogued
Documentation?
Management?
Preservation?
Standards of practice?
Access?
Procedures?
Unknown items in our collections…
Ornithology Department Archives
“Estate of Graham Brown – note books”
Catalogued in our Records & Archives database (TRIM)
?
Step 1: create individual records
A record for every item
Step 2: create digital versions
Digitisation & post processing
A digital version in our database
OCR from a page of Graham Brown’s diary
l>^v-^wAl^ livU*^/) Curiae '^tila'* -u^vttcvi Lsefei cit^:< Lv. 1^ Ol^Vm?iJcw , L>w i^-^Otv^ dS^^iL* ll^^Uk^ M/tTM^li?'^ tvc4fi>r '^^-^ G^WtY^^ uve^v. llCCUvlr]^vv\l^ '^L^>u^ l^t^
You can’t search handwriting
Step 3: transcription
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
How to attract online volunteers?
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Friday Monday = 30% transcribed
Forums build online communities
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Validator
Ready for display?
17.
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
DigiVol export
Extracted transcript in Word
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Converted & reformatted
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Ready for display!
17.
Transcript in our database
Step 4: make them accessible
Add metadata
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Add metadata
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Add metadata
Upload into Internet Archive
https://archive.org/
Final destination: Biodiversity Heritage Library
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.orgwww.biodiversitylibrary.org
Along with the transcriptions!
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.orgwww.biodiversitylibrary.org
Progress thus far…
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
• 42 field diaries digitised
• 22 diaries uploaded onto DigiVol & transcribed
• 98 crowd-sourced volunteers
Thank you Paul Flemons & Rhiannon Stephens!
New homes for our field diaries
… in our Scientific Art & Observation Collection.
Final step?Tell everyone!
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org
But what about the data?
5 Graham Brown field diaries:
5611 animal sightings
547 mentions of people and organisations
Graham Brown, 1948
Date Species Location09/09/1947 Red Wattle bird Colac, near lake, in flowering gums13/09/1947 Crested Grebes Colac East, end of Church St, mouth
of the creek
13/09/1947 Little Pied Cormorant Colac, perched on the wreck13/09/1947 Mountain Duck Colac East, end of Church St, mouth
of the creek
13/09/1947 Musk Duck Colac, on the lake13/09/1947 Silver Gull Colac, over the lake, opposite
Queen's Avenue
Data – science
Data – history
547 mentions of people &
organisations
Historical descriptions
of places & events
Personal anecdotes: the life of a 1940s
country doctor
People are using the data!
23 October 1950
At Gundagai the Murrumbidgee was flooded…
…small eucalypts that had been planted and were growing to cover the hillside below the memorial…
…the afternoon was tiring for the road was bad.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/bhlau
Geoscience Australia: Antarctic Field Diaries
69 diaries on DigiVol68 transcribed
So who are these online volunteers?
• Clear online tutorials• Online forums
BarongarookIrrewillipePorepunkahWarracknabeal
• Email support & feedback• People & place name index
• Personal acknowledgement
Supporting online volunteers
Rewarding online volunteers
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Rewarding online volunteers
http://volunteer.ala.org.au/
Slide credit: Paul Flemons, DigiVol Volunteer Survey, April 2015
Taxonomic Descriptions
accessible & discoverable
Making
Page R (2016) Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8767. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8767
Biodiversity knowledge graph
Rod Page Professor of TaxonomyUniversity of Glasgow
Page R (2016) Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8767. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8767
Biodiversity knowledge graph
Rod Page Professor of TaxonomyUniversity of Glasgow
The links that SHOULD
be present between core biodiversity
datasets online
Page R (2016) Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8767. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8767
Linking our core biodiversity data
Page R (2016) Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8767. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8767
Biodiversity knowledge graph
Taxonomic descriptions in the literature
Scientific namesin taxonomic databases
Page R (2016) Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8767. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8767
Taxonomic literature is the foundation upon which our understanding of biodiversity is based.
Biodiversity knowledge graph
Page R (2016) Towards a biodiversity knowledge graph. Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8767. doi: 10.3897/rio.2.e8767
Biodiversity knowledge graph
Taxonomic descriptions in the literature
& elsewhere
Scientific namesin taxonomic databases
Aggregator of information about all Australian species
- Museums - Universities - Government departments - Herbaria - Individuals - Community groups
Yet…
BHL URL
National Species List – editor interface
biodiversity.org.au
Links to BHL
biodiversity.org.au
1834
Without links, taxonomic databases are little more than online collections of index cards.
Rod Page, 2016
...technology invented by Linnaeus
…in the 1760s.
Who’s going to add all the links?
• Taxonomic community (manually)e.g. NSL staff
• Online community (crowdsourcing)e.g. citizen scientists
• Script (automatically)e.g. Rod Page
bionames.org
gbif.org
Definitive version of this article online
gbif.org
120,000 links
Link
In an ideal world…
1851
Definitive version of this article online
australianmuseum.net.au
1851
australianmuseum.net.au
1851
Shane McEvey
DOI (digital object identifier)
• definitive version
• a character string used to uniquely and permanently identify an electronic object
DOI (BHL)
Definitive version of this article online
DOI(external)
Definitive version of this article online
1858= out of copyright!
DOI
Link
Dactylopsila trivirgata Gray, 1858
Dactylopsila trivirgata Gray, 1858
Theory of evolutionvia natural selection
Dactylopsila trivirgata Gray, 1858
Wallace’s Line
This is the sort of contextual information that is contained within our biodiversity literature,
and why it is so important that we make it freely available online for everyone.
Thank you
Nicole Kearneynkearney@museum.vic.gov.au @nicolekearney
Elycia Wallisewallis@museum.vic.gov.au@elyw
BHL Australia@BHL_au