All posts tagged with bhl-europe

Nǐ hǎo! Last month, I attended the Annual Meeting of the Biodiversity Informatics Standards Organization (www.tdwg.org), one of my favorite meetings of the year because it provides a thorough view of the current advances in the field of Biodiversity Informatics. TDWG 2012 was hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, on Oct. 22-27.

Over the past few weeks, you’ve heard a lot about our recent meetings and world travels in Berlin, Germany and Cape Town, South Africa. The BHL-Europe, BHL-Global, and BHL-Africa meetings were incredibly productive, paving the way for the future development of both the existing global BHL network as well as the inception of a new BHL node in sub-Saharan Africa. As you can imagine, such meetings, though undeniably rewarding, also require quite a bit of work, so the final weekend of our escapades, we decided it was time to “play” and, in true BHL spirit, explore the country’s wildlife in person, through a safari at Inverdoorn Game Reserve and Safari Lodge.

This week, we feature one of our colleagues from “across the pond,” as we like to say. Meet Dr. Francisco Welter-Schultes, whose many accomplishments include studying mollusks at the University of Goettingen, initiating and running the AnimalBase project, and, last but certainly not least, participating in the BHL-Europe project!

It is no secret that the Biodiversity Heritage Library project has grown on a global scale, with BHL projects springing up in Europe, China, Australia, Brazil, and Egypt. Many of our new partners rely of the experience of BHL-US, as the original BHL project has come to be known, for insight and suggestions. One such partner is BHL-Europe, and a recent BHL-EU meeting in London proved to be a valuable opportunity to not only allow our European partners to gather and discuss various technical and workflow issues, but also to allow representatives from BHL-US to provide input based on our experience.

So, as many of you may already know, BHL has gone global – way global, with BHL-Europe and BHL-China well underway, and a memorandum of understanding has just been signed with Australia. BHL and the Bibliotecha Alexandrina (for an Arab-language BHL) have had some preliminary discussions. Many of our BHL staff are currently in Vienna, Austria working with the BHL-Europe team to discuss project details and developments.