Martin R. Kalfatovic at the Internet Archive Library Leaders Forum (2017). Photographer Unknown
It’s time to say farewell to my official time with the Biodiversity Heritage Library! As I outlined in my presentation at the 2024 BHL Annual Meeting, when I took over as BHL Program Director in April 2012, I had a firm and successful organization to lead. And all that success rests on the shoulders of the countless staff in BHL partner organizations around the world.
I began my professional career at the Smithsonian and succumbed to the temptation to feel that such a large institution, so rich (relatively speaking) in resources, would be able to easily contain multitudes. But, in 2004/2005 when I began work on two science projects (the Biological Centrali Americana and the U.S. Exploring Expedition — both now mostly in BHL!), the publications from both these naturalist projects were scattered around the world. No one institution or library could create a full digital version alone.
Working with the core group of BHL partners – Tom Garnett (Smithsonian), Chris Freeland and Doug Holland (Missouri Botanical Garden), Graham Higley (Natural History Museum, London), Tom Moritz (AMNH), and, of course Cathy Norton (MBLWHOI Library), Constance Rinaldo (MCZ/Harvard), and Nancy Gwinn (Smithsonian) – the initial 10 (soon 12) BHL partnership formed.
This idea of a global collaboration in service to science, to biodiversity, to sustainability on our only planet, has been the motivating force in my time with BHL. And also for many of you. This collaboration will continue as BHL is bigger than any one person, as we’ve learned with the past successful transitions of partner representatives, Secretariat staff, and Program Directors.
William Faulkner’s Nobel prize speech often comes to my mind:
I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.
— William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950
Faulkner was addressing a clear existential threat at that time, global nuclear war. As we now know, the seeds of two more quiet crises, those of climate change and biodiversity loss, we already long planted. BHL is a key resource in finding solutions to these crises and as many have said, “if BHL didn’t exist, it would have to be built again.”
It’s because of all of you, and the others no longer with BHL that I believe that BHL will, as Faulkner noted, not only endure, but also prevail.
BHL Partners at the 2024 BHL Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL.
For a look back at some of the amazing work of this global consortium in the past year, view the 2023 BHL Annual Report.
Martin R. Kalfatovic is BHL Program Director and Associate Director, Digital Programs and Initiatives Division, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. As the BHL Program Director, Mr. Kalfatovic functions as the executive director and manager of the international consortium of over 80 natural history, botanical garden, government, and university libraries engaged in the mass digitization of taxonomic literature. The position also serves as a key contact for government, NGO, and academic leaders at both the national and international level. Within his role at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Mr. Kalfatovic is responsible for the Libraries’ active Digital Library program. This program includes the creation of digital editions of library materials, online exhibitions, and new digital publications.
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