The Biodiversity Heritage Library
Martin R. Kalfatovic Smithsonian Libraries
Smithsonian Libraries Board Orientation 6 March 02013 | Washington, DC
The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library Charles Darwin, et al (1847)
The Wherefore of BHL
Specimen collections
Databases
Publications
Observations
‘Gray’literature
Index cards
Field notebooks
Taxonomic Impediment
Technology Library Science
Biodiversity Heritage Library
15 Memberinstitutions…Formedin2006
15 Members
•Academy of Natural Sciences Library and Archives •American Museum of Natural History Library •California Academy of Sciences Library •Cornell University Library •The Field Museum Library •Harvard University Botany Libraries •Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology •Library of Congress •Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library •Missouri Botanical Garden Library •Natural History Museum, London, Library & Archives •The New York Botanical Garden •Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, Library & Archives •Smithsonian Institution Libraries •United States Geological Survey Libraries
Secretariat and Technical Staff August 2011 Program Director
Program Manager
Collections Coordinator
Technical Director Programmer Data Analyst
40,381,261pages 111,715 items 58,495 titles
5 March 2013
Content Growth 2007-2013
Cornell ingest | Dec 2011 14,458 14,458
Items Added: Past 12 Months
Average: 1,204 / month
User Statistics: 2007 - 2012
Visitors: 3,628,088 Page Views: 17,604,395 New vs. Returning: 48.88% vs. 50.12%
2007
2012 112,584 visitors | March 2012
233 countries Users in 233 Countries
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Increase agreements with publishers of in copyright materials
(up from ~250)
In Kind Contributions: CY 2011
SIL Direct Staff Contributions 4.32 FTE $400,000 Other Costs $242,948 Funding Received (internal, grants, etc.) $537,607
Administration
Metadata
Collections support
Database/Systems
Conservation
Scanning Preparation
Direct Scanning
Quality control
BHL Member Participation Staff FTE
29.5 FTE from the 14 member institutions (does not include Secretariat or Technical staff)
Fire
wall
Images (JP2) PDF Coordinate-based OCR XML metadata
BHL Architecture: Window Seat Ed.
BHL DB
Internet Archive
Storage
Logic
APIs UI Data
Exports
Access
Data Transform Utilities
Geocoding
Name Finding
The Biodiversity Heritage Library: 2006
Experiment with taxonomic markup
Smithsonian Contributions and Studies Series Collaboration with Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press
1,000+ titles; 100,000 pages
3.8 million total views | 63,000 images (13 Feb 13)
233 countries Users in 233 Countries
June 2012 Over 30 librarians, scientists, informaticians gathered in Cape Town, South Africa to start the formation of the BHL Africa node; funded by JRS Foundation
Trish Rose-Sandler, Missouri Botanical Garden DLF Forum 2012 Denver CO Art of Life project
Facebook Total Page Likes: 4,384
Twitter @ BioDivLibrary Total Followers: 2,369
Pinterest 2,373 images & 16 collections
Blog Total Visits: 9,096 (2Q13)
BHL Social Media February 2013
Outreach
“Thank you much for your help. It is so useful as I am right now working on the fishes of Ganges. Moreover it is so great that the library provides classic literature on fishes and it was a dream to me [when] I started my taxonomy ten years back. It is marvellous [what] you did for us which are badly in need of old literature. Thanks a lot.”“Thank you much for your help. It is so useful as I am right now working on the fishes of Ganges. Moreover it is so great that the library provides classic literature on fishes and it was a dream to me [when] I started my taxonomy ten years back. It is marvellous [what] you did for us which are badly in need of old literature. Thanks a lot.”
What an absolutely wonderful site. It is a treasure trove of information. Thank you!
May I compliment you on this splendid service? The Library's invaluable for my work on seasonal
variability of climate and vector-borne disease in British India, 1875-1940.
I really appreciate your work. The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an excellent resource that regularly helps my assistant and I obtain original descriptions for plants .... I feel so privileged to be working in a day in age when such resources are so readily available and easy to obtain.
Looking Forward
In any well-appointed Natural History Library there should be found every book and every edition of every book dealing in the remotest way with the subjects concerned.
Charles Davies Sherborn Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922
Thanks…QuestionsandDiscussion