JJ Dearborn, BHL Data Manager. Photo credit: JJ Dearborn
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to welcome JJ Dearborn to the newly created position of BHL Data Manager. The new Data Manager position is part of the BHL Secretariat, hosted by the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. As Data Manager, Ms. Dearborn will be responsible for the oversight and management of the digital data collections (datasets) of BHL. She will be developing and implementing a comprehensive view of how BHL collections can be optimized to support the interoperability of BHL data in the larger biodiversity community.
Ms. Dearborn previously worked for three BHL founding Members (Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, Smithsonian, and Harvard Botany Libraries) as well as the Wolbach Library at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, bringing over a decade of experience serving open data, open science, and open access initiatives. In previous positions for The State of Massachusetts (Product Owner and Data Librarian for the State of Massachusetts); The Knight Foundation Open Data to Open Knowledge Initiative (serving as Data Librarian for the Boston Public Library and the City of Boston); and BHL (most recently serving as Digital Projects Librarian for Harvard Botany Libraries), she wore many hats as a technical project manager, data librarian, UX researcher, blogger, and instructional designer.
Ms. Dearborn holds an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a B.A. in History from UCLA.
Ms. Dearborn will bring years of project management and data management experience to this exciting new position for BHL. Please join us in welcoming her to the BHL family!
Colleen Funkhouser joined the Biodiversity Heritage Library as Program Manager in 2020, working to build strategic partnerships and to maintain and grow the infrastructure and services of BHL. A digital librarian with a background in biology, Ms. Funkhouser has previously supported academic and federal libraries with a focus on scientific research. She was first introduced to BHL as a Cataloging Intern for the Smithsonian Field Book Project in 2015. Ms. Funkhouser holds an MSLIS from The Catholic University of America and a BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology from Clemson University.
Wonderful! Welcome. On the topic of data, does BHL have a SPARQL endpoint?
Hi Donna,
Thank you for the warm welcome!
BHL does not have a SPARQL endpoint but you can access our datasets in a myriad of ways at BHL’s Developer and Data Tools.
Additionally, a substantial amount of BHL Data is already in Wikidata which does have a SPARQL endpoint. To explore BHL data in Wikidata, use the following BHL properties in your SPARQL queries:
BHL bibliography ID (P4327)
BHL creator ID (P4081)
BHL Page ID (P687)
BHL part ID (P6535)
BHL name ID (P8724)
Also if it is of interest, you can work on converting our data to linked open data by using the Mix’n’Match Tool. There is still loads of work to do and we need everyone’s help.
Looking forward to putting a face to a name! All the best,
JJ