Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Scientific DisciplinesFrom Discovery to Delivery
Cathy NortonDeputy Director BHLIAMSLICSeptember 16,2008
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
This library serves the all of the scientific institutions in Woods Hole
and other scientific groups in the area.
The Library is facing a new dynamic phase
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity InformaticsEvolving in the Biological Sciences
National Geographic News, 05/21/08 Tuatara
Lib
rari
es
????
?
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
encyclopedists
Nomencaltor Animalia“Seahorse” Conrad Gesner 1570
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
encyclopedistsDenis Diderot – 1751Encyclopedie
Precursor to Sematic Web Thinking
• “So great is the power of linkage and order that even the mundane becomes important” DD
• Encyclopedia… the word signifies unity of knowledge
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Serine Molecule
BiodiversityHeritage Library
Synthesis CenterField Museum
InformaticsMarine BiologicalLaboratory & MOBOT
Education & OutreachSmithsonian/Harvard
SecretariatSmithsonian
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
• The Species Sites Group works with contributors and data providers and IP issues
• Biodiversity Informatics Group is responsible for the software development of tools and open access delivery of species information through a single portal
• Education and Outreach Group works to insure widespread awareness of the EOL
• Biodiversity Synthesis Group will facilitate cross disciplinary involvement and will explore integrative topics, including taxonomy, evolution, biogeography, phylogenetics and biodiversity informatics.
• Scanning and Digitization Group led by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, is a consortium of 10 natural history, botanical and research libraries that will scan for the public commons out of copyright and permissioned works.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Encyclopedia of Life
• Major project to create a single Web page for every known species (1.8 million!)
• Total funding will reach at least $50M• EOL needs the literature underpinning in the BHL
project• BHL now key partner in EOL project• Launched on 9th May, 2007
– First 30,000 pages launched at TED Feb 27th, 2008
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
“The launch of the Encyclopedia of Life will have a profound and creative effect in science… this effort will lay out new directions
for research in Every branch of biology:
– E.O. Wilson
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Collaborative Tree of Life distributed semantic
Biodiversity Heritage Library ever evolving TED all information Synthesis Center Oh wow! SpeciesBase ClassificationBank Education and Outreach ANTS index MacArthur Foundation taxonomic intelligence modular software communal ownership user defined AvenueA | Razorfish OBIS MBL free
visualization images WorkBench sounds phylogeny web 2.0 names-based infrastructure Atlas of Living Australia February 2008 Google Marine Biological Laboratory all species Smithsonian FISHBASE Harvard Field Museum Tree of Life E. O. Wilson aggregation / mashup EDIT ScratchPad widgets
MOBOT NHM AMNH NYBotancial Sloan Foundation GBIF llison l NameBank videos National Geographic any classification TDWG/BIS
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage LibraryMission:Provide Open Access to Biodiversity Literature
Goals:
Digitize the core published literature on biodiversity and put on the Web
Agree on approaches with the global taxonomic community, rights holders and others
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Collaborators:Internet ArchiveInternational Commission on Zoological NomenclatureOpen Content AllianceAmerican Institute of Biological SciencesEuropean Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT)Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)BioOneLearned Societies Many more under negotiation
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
BHL
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
How to build the BHL enterprise
• Recognition of the importance of all types of material in all formats• Recognition that a single set of rules, a single mechanism, a single
type of discovery tool cannot accomplish everything• Recognition that entities other than libraries can, want to, and will
contribute to the information-finding construct• Recognition that all of us are part of the whole, and that it is an
interdependent relationship, not the relationship of an all-powerful mother ship
• Recognition that the way we have made decisions in the past may no longer serve us well
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Boston Scanning Center
Regional Scanning Center
Books are delivered to scanning center where they are processed .
All volumes are on books carts clearly marked with the library’s logo and name. Books are taken off the cart ..scanned… returned to cart.
On the shipping day it is rewrapped and sent back to MBLWHOI Library.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Internet Archive Scribe: Boston
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
How big is the Biodiversity domain?
•Over 5.4 million books dating back to 1469
•800,000 monographs
•40,000 journal titles (12,5000 current)
•50% pre-1923
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Classes of Texts• Public Domain – pre 1923
• Non-profit society journals
• Post 1923 monographs/journals
–Monographs without © renewals
–Commercial journals with permission
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Where are we?– 7,046 Titles– 17,945 volumes– 7,431,246 pages– 54 journal or serials titles
permissions obtained– Provisional agreements with
BioOne for rehosting– Working on agreement with
JSTOR
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
One Year Anniversary MBLWHOI
7354 Books
>3000 Journal volumes
>2.99 Million Pages (standard)
>5280 Foldouts (up to 18” x 24”)
425 Average pages per item
5,346 Miles Traveled
4700 Hours of Staff Time
10¢ Cost per page
$2 Cost per foldout
Statistics as of 9/1/08
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Carolus Linnaeus, “father of modern taxonomy”
“Who Knowth not the name
Knowth not the subject”
Linnaeus, 1737,
Critica Botanica n 210.
Royal Science Academy of Sweden, portrait
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
The challenge for contemporary DIGITAL libraries
Goal:
Use one name to find the content for all names
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Names – the only universal metadata for Biology
Names offer a logical way to search for and index content
•Names annotate data objects•All names annotate all data objects
•A compilation of all names ever used is the foundation of a universal index for biology or for a semantic web for biology
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
LibrariesPublishers
MuseumsFederal Agencies
Who is affected by these problems?
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Serious challenges in federated environments
One organism
4 scientific names
4 maps
We want one map
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
• All names & all Classifications ClassificationBank • Alternative names reconciled
• Similar names disambiguated
• Exploit hierarchies to browse and search, build a comprehensive classification
• Improve performance with federated systems
• Read documents, web sites, databases and taxonomically indexing the content
• Create a unified portal to information about organisms on the internet
Taxonomic intelligence is the inclusion of taxonomic practices, skills and knowledge within informatics services to manage information about organisms
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Taxonomic Intelligence• Lexicon of Scientific Names
• Reconciliation and Disambiguation
• Hierarchical Inclusion
• Integration into Information Retrieval
• Linkage to Other Data Types (e.g., Molecular, Morphological, Phenotype)
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
uBioRSS Taxonomically Intelligent RSS Feed Aggregator
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
MBL WHOI Library – Woods Hole authors’ publications
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
MBL WHOI Library – Woods Hole species publications
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
What Can the BHL Be?
– One stop shopping for scientific biodiversity texts.– Digital Preservation of the scholarly record in the field
of biodiversity.– A suite of services to facilitate the reuse of the BHL
content especially by the EOL– Embedding of textual content in the emerging
knowledge ecology. Three sets of players – practicing biologists, libraries, publishers.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Questions
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
AcknowledgmentsNeil SarkarGerald Weissmann
The Gordon and Betty Moore FoundationA.W. Mellon Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan FoundationJohn D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Internet Archive
BHL & EOL Teams
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org
www.eol.org
www.biodiversitylibrary.org
www.ubio.org
Biodiversity Heritage Library
© 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library www.biodiversitylibrary.org