Biodiversity Heritage Library: Creating a digital library for access and research

Joe ColemanBHL Digitisation manager

“The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library”.

C.R. Darwin

Turning this…

Digitisation

… into this.

• Digitisation for BHL about access

Partners

Access

• Users can develop own tools to access data

• Can be search OCR text for species name

• Full text search (coming soon)

• Web portal just one way into the BHL data

• Cite Bank & Biostor two examples

• BHL data available using open standards and linked to semantic web

An elementary manual of New Zealand entomologyLondon,West, Newman & Co.,1892.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/34950

Copyright

• Majority of works in Public Domain• Public Domain considered to be

> 90 years from publication• What’s in the public domain

stays in the public domain.

• Permission sought by contributors for in copyright material.

• Use of in copyright content licensedL'histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins

A Paris :De l'imprimerie de Regnaud Chaudiere,1551.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/4748789

Audience

• Scientific Community • Need authoritative reference texts• Need to find data

• General interest• Want to see what’s interesting

and attractive• Need to know what to look for

• Web developers• Need a challenge!• Need open data standards.

A monograph of the Trochilidæ, or family of humming-birds /.London :Printed by Taylor and Francis ;1861 [i.e. 1849-1861].biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34843253

Digitisation Workflow

• Images• Captured as RAW• Converted to 8 bit uncompressed TIFF• Processed TIFFs saved as

archival copy• Compressed JPEG 2000

uploaded to IA

• Metadata• Bibliographic record as MODS• Page metadata exported from

Macaw as XML

Ornithological miscellany V.1London :Trübner and Co., Bernard Quaritch, R.H. Porter,1876-1878.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/108982

Digitisaton workflow

Macaw

• Developed by Smithsonian Libraries ….• Simple metadata creation for book

and page items • Upload directly to

Internet Archive

• … Hacked by MV

• Simplified workflow• New styling• Multiple contributor upload

Geographical distribution of publications

Joe Coleman

jcoleman@museum.vic.gov.a

u

http://bhl.ala.org.au

Thank you