Last month, the BHL Program Director Martin R. Kalfatovic and Program Manager Carolyn A. Sheffield participated in multiple events throughout different regions of Kenya to help promote BHL to existing and potentially new users, connect with our BHL Africa partners, and explore opportunities for growing partnerships in the region.  We will be highlighting each event with its own blog post throughout the week, starting with the first stop in Nairobi, Kenya.

From 15-19 May 2017, the National Museums of Kenya and the Catholic University of East Africa (CUEA) co-hosted the XXI AETFAT (Association for the Study of Tropical Flora of Africa) Congress. Held on the beautiful campus of CUEA, the Congress brought together approximately 250 individuals from around the world to meet and discuss research on various aspects of the botany of tropical Africa.  BHL participated with a symposium Botanical Contributions from the Biodiversity Heritage Library: A Focus on Africa, which focused on digital library resources related to the conference topics.

Martin R. Kalfatovic at the podium for the BHL symposium  at XXI AETFAT 2017

The symposium was led by BHL Program Director, Martin R. Kalfatovic and also included presentations from BHL Program Manager, Carolyn Sheffield and Director of JSTOR Primary Sources, Deirdre Ryan. 

Kalfatovic opened the session with an introduction to BHL, entitled Biodiversity Heritage Library: Empowering Discovery Through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge. Kalfatovic also delivered a presentation on behalf of Grace Costantino entitled The Story of Engagement: Outreach Strategies at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.  
In Building the Biodiversity Heritage Library Through Standards and Content, Sheffield reported on strategies and results from BHL Workshops, highlighting involvement and new contributions from BHL Africa partners.  

Ryan delivered an overview of JSTOR entitled “Journals, AETFAT, African Plants, and more…,” covering the scope and breadth of JSTOR collections, including 2,600 journal titles which are made freely available to all non-profit and educational institutions in Africa through the African Access Initiative.  Additionally, she highlighted results of the African Plants Initiative that grew into the Global Plants Initiative and has brought digitized herbarium sheets into the JSTOR collection, many of which link to BHL!  She also identified the AETFAT Congress as a historically significant event for JSTOR, where some of the founding ideas first germinated.  Kalfatovic then concluded the session and opened it up for questions.  

Carolyn Sheffield and Ben Nakitare at the NMK booth       at the XXI AETFAT 2017 exhibits

Approximately 20 people were in attendance at the session and discussions were fruitful, focusing on both BHL work to date and potential future opportunities. 

In addition to the symposium, the conference provided several other opportunities for productive discussions with both BHL users and also with several BHL Africa partners.  It was especially lovely to catch up with some of our colleagues from National Museums of Kenya who hosted and participated in the BHL Africa Workshop in 2015, including Dr. Geoffrey Mwachala, Dr. Asha Owano, Lawrence Monda, and Ben Nakitare. We are thrilled with their ongoing commitment to participate in BHL, and we look forward to continued collaborations with our partners at National Museums of Kenya and all of our BHL Africa partner institutions!  

Ana Luisa Guzmán, Dr. José Sarukhán, and Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn

BHL is thrilled to welcome CONABIO as its newest Member and Global Node!

Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, or CONABIO) joined on December 16, 2014 and will also serve as the BHL’s newest global node, BHL Mexico.  CONABIO brings a strong conservation perspective and is positioned to help expand BHL’s reach to Spanish-speaking communities.

To kickoff their membership, CONABIO hosted representatives from BHL Central, December 15 – 17, at their offices in Mexico City.  Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn (Chair of the BHL Executive Committee and Director of Smithsonian Libraries), Martin Kalfatovic (BHL Program Director and Associate Director of Smithsonian Libraries), William Ulate (BHL Technical Director), and Carolyn Sheffield (BHL Program Manager)

Constance Rinaldo

participated in the meetings which included presentations, discussions on ways to participate in BHL, and a signing ceremony. Constance Rinaldo, Vice-Chair of the BHL Executive Committee participate in the meetings via teleconference.

CONABIO attendees included:
Dr. José Sarukhán (CONABIO National Commissioner), Dr. Patricia Koleff (Director of Analysis and Priorities), Dr. Carlos Galindo (Director of Scientific Communication), Hesiquio Benitez (Director of International Cooperation and Implementation), Karina Sánchez (Legal Coordinator), Juan Kasa (Director of Systems), Dr. Ana Isabel González (Invasive Species Coordinator), Dr. Esther Quintero (Priority Species Coordinator), Diana Hernández (Coordinator of Taxonomic Catalogues), Bernardo Terroba (Coordinator of Editorial Production), Jacinta Ramírez (Specialist in Documentation and contents), Dr. Raúl Sierra (Coordinator of Ecoinformatics), Alejandro Molina (Ecoinformatics), and Ana Luisa Guzmán (Technical Secretary)

Dr. Patricia Koleff

On the first day, Dr. Patricia Koleff opened the meeting with a warm welcome to both BHL and CONABIO staff and an overview of the goals for the next few days. Martin Kalfatovic provided an overview of the various organizational and operations aspects of BHL.  In the afternoon, Dr. Patricia Koleff provided an overview of the history and operations of CONABIO.  Dr. Carlos Galindo presented on CONABIO’s numerous collaborations and provided a demo of their website.  The afternoon also included discussions on CONABIO’s goals for participating in BHL and the formation of an initial work plan for 2015.

December 16 was the big day with Dr. José Sarukhán joining the group for further discussions on the work plan and to formalize CONABIO’s new partnership with BHL.  Early that afternoon, Dr. José Sarukhán, Ana Luisa Guzmán, and Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn signed the BHL Memorandum of Understanding, officially making CONABIO the 17th BHL Member!

BHL and CONABIO staff

William Ulate

The next day, CONABIO staff were invited to attend presentations to learn more about BHL. Martin Kalfatovic presented on BHL’s organizational structure, financial overview, scanning and permissions priorities, website usage and social media engagement, and collaborations.  William Ulate provided a technical overview of BHL‘s scanning workflows, APIs, website functionality such as OCR and indexing capabilities, and current projects. Overall, it was a very successful session with 33 CONABIO staff in attendance and an engaged question and answer session in both English and Spanish.

We’re thrilled to have CONABIO on board and look forward to the exciting contributions that they will make to BHL, both locally and globally!

Dr. Patricia Koleff, Dr. Nancy E. Gwinn, Carolyn Sheffield, and Karina Sánchez finalizing the BHL/CONABIO MOU

The importance and need for unique, persistent identifiers for reliable access to published literature has become widely accepted, and the literature for the biodiversity informatics community is no exception.  For published works, these generally take the form of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). BHL has been consistently assigning CrossRef DOIs to monographic publications for three years. However, the number of items in BHL with DOIs remains relatively small with just over 68,000 assigned to date.  In addition to the remaining monographs, BHL now also has over 140,000 articles identified, primarily via BioStor. The current CrossRef pricing model does not scale for the full and growing BHL corpus.  Which is why…

We need your input! 

BHL is conducting a survey to learn more about what you would like out of DOIs in BHL and to gather recommendations for cost-effective solutions for meeting those needs.

This survey was initiated at the 2014 TDWG Conference in Jönköping, Sweden, October 26 – November 1, 2014 where the survey was distributed as part of a poster session http://www.pinterest.com/pin/42925002674475008/ on DOIs in BHL.

DOIs in BHL. Poster from 2014 TDWG Conference. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/42925002674475008/.

Missed the poster, or weren’t able to attend TDWG this year?  No problem!  The survey is also available online: http://surveymonkey.com/s/BHLDOIs.  Your input will help guide our strategy for assigning DOIs to the literature in BHL. We hope you’ll take a few minutes to provide your thoughts and recommendations.

Thank you in advance for your time!

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Women’s Committee awarded a one-year grant to Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) to build online exhibitions to showcase the scientific and historical contributions of Women and Latino naturalists and illustrators. The project, entitled Notable Women and Latinos in Natural History, will draw from content in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and use the Biodiversity Library Exhibition (BLE) platform developed by BHL Europe.

As part of this project, SIL hosted a workshop on the BLE platform on 22-26 September 2014.

Workshop participants, clockwise from left foreground: Laurel Byrnes, Bianca Crowley, Jiri Frank, and Adriana Marroquin

On September 22, BHL Program Manager Carolyn Sheffield kicked off the meeting with an introduction to the Notable Women and Latinos project and an overview of the goals for the week.  Jiři Frank, of the National Museum of Prague and a developer of the BLE, presented an overview of the platform and then provided an in-depth demonstration of how to design exhibits in BLE.

Over the next three days, Jiři led a hands-on workshop that provided an opportunity for the project’s Digital Exhibition Coordinators, Adriana Marroquin and Laurel Byrnes, to build experience working directly in BLE. BHL staff, including Grace Costantino, Bianca Crowley, and Joel Richard, also attended portions of the workshop to gain familiarity with the platform.

All in all, it was a highly successful workshop with Adriana and Laurel creating preliminary versions of the exhibitions that they will build for the Smithsonian Women’s Committee project. On the last day of the workshop, SIL staff were invited to attend a demonstration of the BLE platform and to provide feedback on the initial designs that were compiled over the last couple of days. Both Adriana and Laurel received valuable feedback and there was some great discussion at the end. At least one attendee expressed interest in contributing additional content to existing exhibits or creating new ones.

We extend a big thank you to Jiři Frank for lending all of his time and experience to making the workshop a great success and kudos to Adriana and Laurel on the impressive progress that they made over the course of the week! We are also very grateful for the support from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee that made this possible, and we look forward to seeing these digital exhibitions take shape over the next couple of months!