On March 15-16, 2012, the BHL Institutional Council convened at the Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University for their sixth annual meeting.* The BHL Institutional Council is composed of the directors of the BHL member libraries. The annual meetings serve as an opportunity for council members to provide updates about BHL activities at their institutions, discuss governance issues, make funding decisions, and strategize about the future of BHL. It also allows BHL Administrative Staff to inform council members about BHL updates in their areas of expertise.

Not surprisingly, the meeting agenda was quite full, as there was much to discuss and only two days in which to do it. Most of meeting day one was devoted to providing BHL project updates. Common themes arising from council member updates included the need to develop strategies to incorporate existing scanned content digitized outside of traditional BHL scanning workflows and a variety of grant-funded internal projects producing deliverables of interest to BHL. A significant amount of time was also spent discussing the expansion of BHL outreach activities, including an agreement to develop an official BHL Marketing and Branding Plan. On day two of the meeting, the BHL Steering Committee engaged in initial discussions to develop a BHL spending plan for the next few years. A vital component of this plan will, of course, be an allocation for continued scanning, much of which will be driven by user requests and subject-oriented collections. Finally, the committee deliberated on policies for consortium and global growth.

Some final highlights from the meeting included the appointment of new BHL Executive Committee members and a few special titles awarded to some departing members of the BHL team. BHL Executive Committee appointments include: Nancy E. Gwinn (Smithsonian Institution Libraries), Chair; Connie Rinaldo (Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University), Vice-Chair; and Susan Fraser (LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden), Secretary.

This was also the final BHL meeting for three retiring core BHL members, including BHL’s Program Director, Tom Garnett. The BHL director since the project’s inception, Mr. Garnett is retiring at the end of March, 2012. His position will be filled by Martin Kalfatovic (Smithsonian Institution Libraries). In honor of Mr. Garnett’s contribution to BHL, the Institutional Council awarded him with the title of Founding Program Director, BHL. Also leaving the BHL team to enjoy retirement are Cathy Norton (MBLWHOI Library), former BHL Executive Committee Chair, and Graham Higley (Library, Natural History Museum, London), BHL Executive Committee Immediate Past Chair. The IC bestowed the title of BHL Member Emeritus on Cathy Norton and Founding Chair Emeritus on Graham Higley.

Of course, the IC Meeting wasn’t simply all work and no play. Attendees also took time to enjoy the Harvard campus. The meeting itself was held in the Agassiz room at the Museum of Comparative Zoology – a conference room dedicated to Louis Agassiz, the founder of the museum and a prominent 19th century natural historian (see works by Agassiz in BHL). Library staff gave tours of the Ernst Mayr Library, including a guided visit of the rare book room. On the night of March 15th, meeting attendees also enjoyed a catered dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club in a room decorated with prints by Alexander Wilson.

The Sixth Annual BHL Institutional Council Meeting was an excellent opportunity for the globally dispersed members of the BHL team to gather for a few short days to share the BHL successes and challenges at their institution and collaborate to develop policies and strategies that ensure the continued health and prosperity of the BHL project. We are anxious to implement the ideas and decisions reached at the meeting and look forward to the seventh annual meeting next year.

*First two BHL Institutional Council Meetings called “Directors Meetings.”

This week we’re excited to present a brand new BHL user. Dr. Nathalie Yonow just discovered BHL this year, and she has already used it to complete research for upcoming publications – research that, prior to BHL, took her a great deal of time, energy, and assistance from colleagues with access to large libraries. We are thrilled to hear from a user who is just discovering everything BHL has to offer.

What is your title, institutional affiliation, and area of interest?

Dr Nathalie Yonow, CERTS, Biosciences, College of Science, Swansea University. My areas of interest include opisthobranch taxonomy and biogeography (Indo-West Pacific).

How long have you been in your field of study?

25 years

When did you first discover BHL?

I first discovered BHL in January of 2012. I wish I had known about it when I was researching my book (Sea Slugs of the Red Sea) as I had lots of old publications and plates to trace and it took a lot of time and a lot of help from colleagues with access to better libraries.

What is your opinion of BHL and how has it impacted your research?
I just started using BHL, but it’s great for finding old publications – much of my research is based around digging up old references to check species identification, localities, spellings, etc. I am afraid I still keep a list of my references on index cards, and I have a batch filed under a question mark that I have been unable to find for 20 years!!

How often do you use BHL?

I have used it several times already since January.

How do you usually use BHL (read the titles online/download whole PDFs/Selecting Pages to Download for a custom PDF/Downloading High Resolution Images/Generating Taxonomic Bibliographies/etc.)

I am very new to BHL and on a steep learning curve! I have checked some species descriptions on line, but I tended to panic and save a whole paper to my computer in case I couldn’t find it again. More recently I selected only the pages I needed and BHL sent me a PDF!! That was marvelous, but for some images, I couldn’t read some of the figure legends. In reading this question, I now see that I can get Hi Res images and create species bibliographies as well, so I will definitely be having a go!!

What are your favorite features/services on BHL?

I’m not sure, as I haven’t used a lot of the services yet, but I think being able to select what I need (sea slugs often form part of a much larger work) and create a PDF of only those pages, will be a favorite feature. The Hi Res option will solve the only problem I have had so far with text readability.

If you could change one thing about BHL, what would it be, or what developmental aspect would you like the BHL team to focus on next?

I am still learning, and this experience has given me more ideas. I am not good at imagining scenarios, but maybe more obvious possibilities for the various services BHL has to offer, like presenting them as tabs or options? Simply by reading this questionnaire I have learned two things I will now try!!

If you had to choose one title/item in BHL that has most impacted your research, or one item that you prefer above any other in BHL, what would it be and why?

In the short time I have been using BHL, I found a paper by Rang 1828 which I have been chasing for the last YEAR to complete a synonymy and have now submitted my paper in its final version! Hooray!! and thank you!

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Welcome to the BHL family, Dr. Yonow! We hope that you will continue to be enthusiastic about the features and content BHL offers. For more information about some of these services, and instructions on how to use them (including a tutorial on how to download high resolution images from BHL), see our tutorials page.

For a list of some of Dr. Yonow’s current and upcoming publications, see the bibliography below:

Yonow, N. (2011) Results of the Rumphius Biohistorical Expedition to Ambon (1990) Part 15. The sub-order Doridina (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Opisthobranchia, Nudibranchia). Zoologische Mededelingen, Leiden 85: 905 -956. http://www.zoologischemededelingen.nl/85/nr04/a17

Photo Nembrotha milleri is from this paper (courtesy of Anja Blonk).

Upcoming Publication: Yonow, N. Opisthobranchs from the western Indian Ocean, with descriptions of two new species and ten new records (Mollusca: Gastropoda). ZooKeys. The journal link is http://www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/

Photo 21 Nembrotha guttata is from this paper (courtesy of H Voigtmann).

Sea Slugs of the Red Sea
304 pages, more than 500 colour photos and illustrations
€ 75.00 (incl P&P;)
http://www.pensoft.net/book/9500/sea-slugs-of-the-red-sea

For more information on these publications or Dr. Yonow’s work, contact her at [email protected]

In November, 2011, at the Life and Literature Conference in Chicago, IL, BHL announced the addition of its fourteenth consortium member, the United States Geological Survey Library (see a list of member libraries on our wiki). Since the announcement, BHL staff have been diligently working with USGS to fully integrate our new library member into BHL workflows and procedures, and it won’t be long before you can access new USGS material in the BHL portal. We at BHL, along with our new colleagues at USGS, are thrilled about this important development in the BHL project.

When asked what contributions USGS could make to the BHL corpus, Richard Huffine, Library Director, replied, “The USGS mission has always spanned both the physical and life sciences. From our historical work in paleontology to our current research in ecosystems, we have collections that will definitely compliment the current holdings of the BHL.” The USGS is focusing their early contributions on filling gaps in BHL and adding a collection of rare research in paleobotany. As Huffine further added, “We’re excited to be part of this historic effort and are looking forward to seeing the BHL reflect the full breadth and depth of what biodiversity means.”

Created in 1879, the U.S. Geological Survey maintains one of the world’s largest libraries dedicated to the earth and natural sciences. Scientific research is a key part of the Survey’s mission, and this work is supported by a wide array of monitoring activities and scientific collections, more than 1,000 research scientists and a library with more than 2,000,000 volumes, 1,500,000 maps and 800 current serial titles. For more information about the U.S. Geological Survey, visit http://library.usgs.gov/.

We are thrilled to add the United States Geological Survey Library to the BHL ranks. We are confident they will contribute a unique array of important biodiversity texts to the over 102,ooo volumes and 38 million pages currently available. Welcome to the team, USGS!

In July, 2011, several members of the BHL staff began putting illustrations from BHL books on Flickr. It started as a simple way to flag favorite staff images and document the illustrations we were using in various outreach activities, like Twitter and Facebook. Today, our Flickr presence has grown to a collection of over 24,000 images and has become one of the most user-celebrated aspects of the BHL project, prompting such statements as “I think I’m in love” and “My favorite Flickr in the whole world!” Several people have asked us to share our experiences using Flickr as a component of BHL and discuss its growth from inception to the success it is now. We couldn’t think of a better place to do this than on our blog.

What’s In It for Us? The Benefits of Flickr

Using Flickr has generated a variety of benefits for the BHL project, many of which were unexpected. First and foremost, Flickr provides us with an easy way to showcase our amazing images – a BHL treasure that was all but hidden in our collection. Before Flickr, there was no simple way for users to access the images in BHL. Now, using Flickr sets and collections, users can go to one place and quickly browse thousands of images. And all of these images are available for free download and re-use, which is an excellent “selling” point for anyone interested in finding gorgeous natural history and botanical illustrations.*

Flickr also allows us to broaden our outreach potential, branching outside of our classic BHL interface and reaching our users on a new platform. The audience using Flickr is often quite different from our traditional user base, thus having a presence on Flickr means that we are able to reach a whole new group of people, including artists and k-12 educators.

Our Flickr group has also provided many unexpected benefits to BHL staff. Not only can users more easily find BHL images, but so can we! What started as a way to document those images we were already using in social media quickly became the source of much of this activity. Flickr images provide excellent fodder for our various social media activities, including tweets, facebook posts and trivia, and provide inspiration for many of our Book of the Week posts. Staff can now easily find illustrations to “spice up” BHL promotional materials, including brochures, business cards, banners, and merchandise, or even bring flair to events like donation campaigns. Plus, incorporating images into BHL reports transforms the otherwise boring white pages into alluring, eye-catching documents that people actually want to read.

The World of Tagging Images: Machine Tags

Through the use of machine tags, Flickr also allows us to collaborate more extensively with projects like EOL. Machine tags look like:

• “taxonomy:binomial=Aegotheles savesi” (quotes required due to space b/w Genus & species)
• taxonomy:family=Fabaceae
• taxonomy:genus=Rhinoceros
• taxonomy:common=Cardinal

Any time an image from our Flickr photostream is machine tagged, it becomes “flagged” for inclusion into the EOL Group Pool and will thus become a part of EOL species pages. (Images are added to the EOL pool on a monthly basis).

See this example of an EOL page for Corvus crassirostris. You’ll notice that the image of the Thick-billed Raven from the BHL Flickr set Album of Abyssinian Birds and Mammals is featured on the page. How cool is that?! In addition to the links from EOL pages (under the “Literature” tab) to taxonomic name occurrences in BHL, now BHL image content can be repurposed directly onto EOL species pages.

We would absolutely love your help tagging more of our images for EOL. For more information about machine tagging, please see the instructions provided by EOL here and feel free to contact us via Flickr mail, Twitter @BioDivLibrary, or our feedback form if you have any questions.

Please note that you have to have a Flickr profile to add tags to BHL images. If you are already a Flickr member or considering becoming one, and would like to have your own images of flora and fauna harvested to EOL species pages, please see the following for more information: http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life/rules/.

Proud Parents: Watching our Flickr Mature

Since the inception of our Flickr group, there have been many project milestones, the first of which (besides actually starting the account!) was implementing a basic organizational structure. Once it was clear that BHL wanted to fully participate in the Flickr environment, staff transformed a haphazard pool of images into organized sets and collections, with sets structured around individual titles and collections around subjects and content types (like “Mammals” or “Book of the Week“). Slightly later, staff capitalized on the opportunity Flickr offered us to celebrate specific events, organizing themed collections such as Halloween or the Holiday Season.

Pagination display on BHL

Eventually, staff realized that Flickr could help us target specific content in our collection for metadata improvement – specifically, pagination improvement. Pagination refers to the display of page numbering that you see on the left hand side of the BHL screen when viewing a book. Although very basic pagination is performed at the time of book scanning, BHL staff manually update this pagination with more helpful information such as identifying illustrations, designating articles, and embedding year and volume information. Learn more about BHL pagination in Gilbert Borrego’s post. Since those books featured on Flickr became some of the most popular in BHL, and since it was difficult to locate illustrations within these items without improved pagination, staff began to prioritize Flickr titles for pagination improvement. As of this week, all 450+ titles in Flickr have been manually paginated in BHL!

Our most recent milestone addresses one of the most common requests we’ve had regarding Flickr content. Until recently, images in Flickr only linked back to the volume level in BHL. This meant that the BHL urls associated with an image in Flickr did not link to the specific page in BHL, but instead to the “item” or book that contained the image. It was often difficult to then locate the image within the book, especially if the pagination had not yet been manually updated. Thanks to the Technical Development team at the Missouri Botanical Garden, all images in Flickr now have page-level links associated with them, allowing users to find the page within a BHL book with a single click.

This improvement came with an added benefit for BHL staff. Previously, to upload images into Flickr, staff had to first download the images from BHL, open them in Adobe Bridge to embed metadata, and then bulk upload to Flickr (more on the previous Flickr process in Gilbert Borrego’s post). Now, staff can flag illustrations directly within the BHL back-end administration portal. Software developed by the MOBOT team then automatically embeds book and page information to these images and uploads to Flickr.

For more information on the technical aspects of these improvements, see our FAQ page.

Overall, we’ve found that Flickr offers us an excellent opportunity to provide access to aspects of our content that were overlooked and under-appreciated. Reaching new audiences and demonstrating that BHL has much to offer outside the realm of taxonomy is a critical step in the growth of the project.

*All BHL images are public domain. However, Flickr does not provide a “public domain” license option. Therefore, our images are listed in Flickr as Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike.