Jane Smith, NHM Library

Biodiversity Heritage Library - News from Europe

BHL Update 28 June 2010ALA Conference 2010

Talk this morning

• Natural History Museum and NHM Library

• Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)

– Colleagues here will cover in detail

• BHL-Europe

• JISC/NEH Darwin’s Library Project

• Opportunities and Challenges

So I don’t forget

• Sharing work carried out by many colleagues

– Team at the NHM

– BHL-E colleagues

– Special Project Partners

– BHL colleagues here in US

• Also, in case I forget, theme – partnerships are good

Natural History Museum

• Nearly 4 Million visitors

• 5,000 scientific visitors

– 20,000 hours

• Research Institute – 350 scientists based at the Museum

• over 70 million specimens

• 7 science departments

NHM Library• Modern and historical

• International coverage of most aspects of biodiversity and geodiversity

• Extensive coverage of taxonomy and systematics

• > 1million books

• 25,000 serials

• Growing digital

• >500,000 artworks on paper

• manuscripts

Users

• Scientific researchers

– Biodiversity & Geodiversity

– Internal / external / citizen scientists

• Researchers in arts, humanities and social sciences

• Public

Funding

• State funding – core activities

• Fund raising - sponsorship and donations

• External project funding

– UK and EU

– Non-government grants

• Partnerships

NHM Digitisation

• BHL scanning

– Journals and books

• Boutique scanning

– More expensive

– Rare / Artworks/ Manuscripts

• Funding

– Internal

– External grants

– Development project funding

– Collaborations

BHL scanning at NHM• Internet Archive

• Single scribe

• Foldouts bench

• Average 3,500 page per shift per day

• Museum titles• Rare/specialist• General• Researcher requests• Darwin• Over 2 million pages

Solution for tackling foldouts

Scanning artwork - Example, World Collections

Programme funded project UK and India

Additional projects

• Recent focus on Darwin

– Material by and about Darwin

– Darwin’s Library Project

• JISC/NEH joint funding

• Digitise content used by Darwin

• Annotated pages

– Wallace from July 2010

• Scanning for others

• Adding to other projects

– BHL, Darwin online, Aluka, Europeana

Scanning the Darwin CollectionTest scanning a page from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

BHL Europe

• Co-funding from the European Commission programme eContentplus

• Funding for three years – 3.4 Million Euros

• Europeana – the cultural website governed by EDL Foundation

– Europeana offers search capabilities through millions of digital item provided by Europe’s museums, galleries, libraries & archives

BHL Europe: Main principles

• BHL-Europe is not funded to digitise

– Funding for digitisiation on National level or alternative funding

• Best Practice Network

– Not a research and development project

– Building solutions with existing (state-of-the-art) technologies

Target Audiences

Libraries Digital library / Open Access networks Digitisation centres Scientists

Citizen Scientists Students Teachers Policy makers Environmental & Conservation agencies Artists

Government officials European citizens

Researchers in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences

BHL and BHL- Europe –shared challenges• Growing need for biodiversity literature

• Analysis of demand indicates that users need an online repository of biodiversity literature (original text content) with a multilingual interface and sophisticated search and filtering functionality

• Taxonomic impediment to research - the lack of access to the published literature of biodiversity is one of the principal obstacles to efficient and productive research, outreach, and education

• Most of the biodiversity literature is held in a few libraries making this literature unavailable for wider use by a broad range of potential users (scientists and non-scientists)

• The cited half-life of publications in taxonomy is longer than in any other scientific discipline (Revisions of taxonomy require seeing all prior literature)

• Repatriation of knowledge to the developing world

Shared aims BHL/BHL-E partners

• Scanning centres established for mass scanning

• Some partners also scanning in-house

• Wish to expand international footprint

• Mirrored content

• Ingest content from across the globe

BHL Europe Objectives

• Provide a multilingual access pointmultilingual access point for the search and retrieval of biodiversity content through EUROPEANA & BHLEUROPEANA & BHL

• Review and test approaches for the establishment and management of multilingual biodiversity digital libraries

• Improve the interoperabilityinteroperability of European biodiversity digital libraries by the innovative application of proven technologies (incl. metadata repositories, deduplication tools, workflow systems)

• Promote the adoption of best practice methods, standards and specifications for the large-scale large-scale implementationimplementation of such repositories

• Facilitate the open access (= free of charge) to taxonomic literature for a large number of target users including the general publicgeneral public

BHL Europe Objectives cont’

• Raise awarenessRaise awareness among target users.

• Develop operational strategies for long-term long-term preservationpreservation and sustainability of the data produced by national biodiversity digitisation programmes

• Facilitate and enable the initiation of scanning initiation of scanning initiativesinitiatives in European countries not yet involved in digitisation programmes and improve the infrastructure for digital libraries in all EU countries

• Negotiate with Rights HoldersNegotiate with Rights Holders for access to in-copyright content

Preservation

• Committed to long-term storage, curation, and preservation of digital text assets for the world-wide biodiversity community

• BHL acting as a steward for this literature, which is the common heritage of humanity. “Science has no borders.”

• To keep this content available and open for the future requires careful organizational planning.

• Preservation is both a technical and political/social process.

BHL Partners

• 13 Countries so far

• 28 partners

• and growing

• Link to other initiatives

BHL-Europe Partner

BHL-Europe Network

BHL-Europe NetworkHenning Scholz, BHL project Coordinator

BHL-Europe Programme Organisation

Second year of three

• First review in May 2010 (Vienna)

• Building the German prototype (October 2010)

• Fully functional GRIB system (de-dublication of library catalogues, bid list, etc.) together with EDIT-Vital by spring 2011

• Over 40.000 digitised books will be available in Europeana by the end of the month (BHL, Naturalis, Biology Centre)

• 50% of BHL-Europe content will be in Europeana by April 2011

Questions?

Digitising Darwin’s Library

The challenge

– A key source of ‘data’ for Darwin was his library – heavily annotated

– Annotations published in late 1980s, but full utility requires access to the books they annotate – some quite obscure

– It would be very costly to digitise his entire library

A solution

– Link transcriptions with digitised books

– For heavily annotated books – scan whole volume

– For sparsely annotated books – just scan annotated pages and link in with digital surrogates

– Store and delivery content with Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), to ensure wide resource discovery and good sustainability

The idea

A partnership - an initial idea from David Kohn

Bringing together

– Research expertise

– Collections

– Existing digitisation programmes

– Initiatives developing and delivering access to biodiversity and cultural/heritage collections

Darwin: “If this were true adios theory” !

Lyell: “The entire variation from the original type... may usually be effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can be obtained by continuing to alter the circumstances, though ever so gradually; indefinite divergence, either in the way of improvement or deterioration, being prevented..."

Context is significant

Partners

– Cambridge University Library (CUL)

– Natural History Museum (NHM)

– Darwin Manuscript Project at the American Natural History Museum (AMNH)

– Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) (Technical development at MOBOT)

Cambridge University Library

Context is significant

JISC-NEH Project –just the beginning…

– This project will enable us to represent just over half of the annotated books in Darwin’s Library – we will fundraise for remainder

– Darwin also kept notes of books he borrowed (and so couldn’t annotate!). Where these books are available, we will mount transcriptions of notes, enabling us to broaden concept to Darwin’s Reading

The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without an extensive library.

Charles Darwin, et al (1987)

Darwin, C.R. ,et al. 1847. Copy of Memorial to the First

Lord of the Treasury [Lord John Russell], respecting the

Management of the British Museum. Parliamentary

Papers, Accounts and Papers 1847, paper nu. (268),

Vol. XXXIV.253 (13 April): 1-3. [Complete Works of

Charles Darwin Online]

Opportunities and Challenges

+ partnerships+ best practices and learning+ new thinking about collections and how we work with researchers

+ how our collections fit with others- Sustainable funding- spaces – digitising so don’t need collection now- range of equipment

- COPYRIGHT

Thank you- and for more informationJane Smith

Natural History Museum Library,

Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Email: jane.smith@nhm.ac.uk

BHL http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

BHL Europe http://www.bhl-europe.eu

Europeana http://europeana.eu

Questions?