The dawn of a new year is an exciting time – a time to look forward to new possibilities and embark on new initiatives. Sometimes, however, it can also be tinged with sadness as these new beginnings may require us to say goodbye as well. For us at BHL, 2016 will also mean saying goodbye to William Ulate as our Technical Director. We have been honored to have him as our Technical Director since 2012 and will miss him in this role. 

William also wanted to take an opportunity to share his thoughts and well-wishes for everyone at BHL in this post:

As some of you may know, I will no longer be the BHL Technical Director after 2015, so I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone in our BHL family for your valuable and kind support during these last three years as Technical Director and two years before that as Global Coordinator.

At the Center for Biodiversity Informatics with Founding BHL Technical Director Chris Freeland, back in 2012.

Particularly, I would like to thank my colleagues at the BHL Technical Team, our former Technical Director, Chris Freeland, the Executive Committee and the TAG members, past and present, for their guidance and trust since 2012.  I also have to recognize the invaluable support from all the folks from the IT Department at Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG).  My gratitude goes also to our Director, Martin Kalfatovic, the Secretariat at Smithsonian and the BHL Staff for all the time we spent working together in numerous meetings and calls… and outside of them too.

But most of all, I would like to wish you all in BHL the best for the upcoming years.  I am positive that the future plans and challenges we have been talking about will make for very interesting technical developments.  I look back proudly to our past achievements from these last 5 years and, as often happens, wish we could’ve done more. However, I believe changes are opportunities and judging from my experience, I am sure BHL will succeed on its endeavor thanks to the continuous work and involvement of each one of you.

At Missouri, USA

For me, this is not a reason to be sad but rather hopeful, because I know the best for BHL is yet to come and, besides, I’m not going too far next year either.  I will still be around since we have received a no-cost extension from the IMLS for the Digging into Data Challenge to finish the Mining Biodiversity project.  And I will remain employed at the Center for Biodiversity Informatics of the Missouri Botanical Garden with the World Flora Online project, so you may still be hearing from me from time to time…

Finally, I just want to say that it has been an honor and a privilege to work by your side. I’ve made a lot of friends worldwide and learned a lot from you all.  For that and many reasons more, my sincerest “¡Gracias!”   As a Latin American, I believe BHL is evidently one of the most successful projects for biodiversity information repatriation, so I would love to see its continuous development for many years to come…  Keep the good work!

William Ulate.

Somewhere in Costa Rica

Thank you, William, for all of your wonderful years of service, and we look forward to still seeing you on various other biodiversity projects in the future!

Best Wishes, The BHL Family

Eight years ago I attended my first Biodiversity Heritage Library staff meeting at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and it was there I was asked to report at the meeting on what I thought the philosophy behind a project to build a global freely accessible online biodiversity library was. My thoughts at that time hovered somewhere around deeply idealistic and altruistic ideas having to do with like-minded libraries collaborating to make the foundation of legacy scientific literature, then accessible only to few, accessible to all. These ideas also related to the growing open access movement. When funding for BHL became available, this type of idealism helped fuel the development of the long-term dynamic form and function of the BHL.

Matthew Person, MBLWHOI Library. Author of this blog post.

I recently thought back to that 2007 BHL meeting in St. Louis as I prepared to attend the BHL Staff Meeting held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, on November 12-13 2015. After years of working as a BHL staff member (we originally called ourselves worker bees!), at this staff meeting I needed to find compelling reasons for us to continue the unfinished work of developing and increasing the sustainability of our freely accessible library of legacy biodiversity content. It was a privilege to be at the Smithsonian to once again meet up with colleagues from sister institutions like Chicago’s Field Museum, Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and Botany Department, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and the distinguished Natural History Museums in New York City, Washington DC, and London…just to name some of the natural history institutions represented at this meeting.

BHL Staff at the 2015 BHL Staff Meeting at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Photo: Martin Kalfatovic.

The hands-on portion for the staff of this project began in 2007 when we first physically explored and analyzed the volumes filling the library stacks of our institutions, selecting materials, preparing those materials for scanning, having them scanned, and transferring the files first to our scanning partner the Internet Archive and then on to the newly developed BHL web portal. This entire process has been improved through successive generations of technological developments, transparent project administration, commitments across the board from the administrations of the BHL Partners and Affiliates, as well as the generous support of many funding agencies and foundations.

Gathered for a pre-meeting dinner at Smithsonian Libraries’ Metadata Librarian Suzanne Pilsk’s house. Photo: Martin Kalfatovic.

As our staff meeting at the Smithsonian progressed, I looked for and found many compelling reasons for our project to move ahead. Foremost of these reasons and the cornerstone of any organization of course, is its staff. Our BHL Library Staff is a cooperative, intelligent, and forward thinking group of librarians and technical development experts. Seeing my BHL colleagues is like meeting up with old friends and dear coworkers who have the highest respect for each other, because we have worked so successfully as a team for nearly an entire decade.

The BHL Staff is no longer at the foot of a mountain at the beginning of an epic hike to the peak, as we were in 2007. It could be said we have scaled the mountain and have discovered that our plan has been sound. The BHL vision statement, “Inspiring discovery through free access to biodiversity knowledge,” has created a global horizon for us. Our online library holds over 170,000 scanned volumes – linked to digital tools which give legacy biodiversity literature as much power as newly published electronic content. The scientific literature content of our library is being given even more power by our technical team, who makes sure our metadata “knows” how to speak with databases and tools outside of the BHL, whereby more scholars and other library users will encounter more links to the literature in our library in more places.

William Ulate, BHL Technical Director. Photo: Martin Kalfatovic.

During the meeting we listened to a review of the last 10 years of the BHL by Program Director Martin Kalfatovic and a technical overview of the architecture of BHL by Technical Director William Ulate. We completed an enumeration and analysis of all the tasks performed by BHL staff members, directed by Martin Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Librarian Keri Thompson, and BHL Secretariat Staff members Grace Costantino, Carolyn Sheffield, and Bianca Crowley, during which we gave ourselves a report card on how well we have done and brainstormed on how to better meet the needs of our Biodiversity Heritage Library users now and in the future. We also shared a number of delicious meals and many conversations over the course of a couple of days.

Small group brainstorming for analysis of tasks performed for BHL. Left to Right: Randy Smith (Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library), Diana Shih (American Museum of Natural History Library); Marty Schlabach (Cornell University Library); Cathy Buckwalter (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Library and Archives). Photo: Martin Kalfatovic.

Much like the first BHL meeting I attended, when the group adjourned we left with agreed upon follow-up tasks, comfortably knowing within a short period of time we’d be back in touch again via our regularly-held conference call meetings. The philosophy behind the concept of the BHL remains the same for me as it was almost a decade ago: we’re a global collaboration, working to ensure that the world’s legacy and select current biodiversity literature is accessible, usable, and sustainable. You can’t get any more compelling than that!

Hello from St. Louis. My name is Michelle Abeln, and I’m a metadata librarian at the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. I’ve been working as our BHL “liaison” for almost five years. My main focus is to make sure that our in-house scanning efforts correlate with the bigger BHL mission.

BOTANICUS
The Missouri Botanical Garden has been a leader in the digitization of scientific literature since 1995, initially focusing on illustrated volumes from the Library’s rare book collection. Working with the Garden’s Bioinformatics department, and its leader Chris Freeland, the Botanicus website was developed early on as a freely accessible web-based encyclopedia for botanical literature. While Botanicus was initially developed to house only the Garden’s holdings, the technologies and ideals behind it eventually led to the development of the BHL portal. Even though BHL is the ultimate repository for our digitized holdings, Botanicus is still very much a part of our workflow. Everything we scan goes through Botanicus first before it turns up in BHL or the Internet Archive.

Botanicus Display

BHL Display – See the Similarities?

We’re lucky here in Missouri to have our own staff of scanners in-house, which means our workflow is quite different from other BHL institutions. We don’t need to send carts of books off site; instead we’re able to take them just down the hall. While this means that our scanning volume might be lower than other institutions, having our scanning staff on site does mean we’re able to deal with quality control issues, such as missing pages and display problems, faster. We also have things a bit easier in terms of pagination. Both Gilbert and JJ discussed the trials and tribulations (and importance!) of paginating in their blogs. At MoBot, our scanners paginate each item before it goes online. We also have the ability to scan extremely rare folios and oversized books on our “Leaf” scanner, an instant capture camera used for archival material and larger fold-outs (such as maps and plates).

Most of what we scan is monographs and journals assigned by BHL coordinators, and are received from BHL users via the online feedback form. Most are “gap-fills,” to complete serial runs, and post-copyright journal titles. We try to balance fulfilling BHL requests while still making sure that the needs of the Garden’s own research staff are met. The library shares scanning staff with the Garden’s Herbarium, so I work closely with our imaging lab coordinator, Mike Blomberg, to organize the scanners.

METADATA
One of the main focuses of my day to day work is metadata! I am forever editing, correcting, adding or subtracting data from both Garden library records and BHL records. I like to be sure that our contributions to BHL are both correct and consistent. This means that all library records are checked for corrections and edited before being parsed through (via XML conversion software) to the Botanicus database. After titles are scanned, the records are checked again once they’re online, just to make sure everything displays properly. If we’re completing a serial run started by another institution, records need to be merged so that all volumes display under one title. I also check to make sure all volumes are labeled the same (I’m a bit on the overly fastidious side when it comes to display-it’s something I know I spend way too much time on. But I do enjoy when everything lines up just so).
After scanning is complete, I return to the library catalogue and create links out to both Botanicus and BHL.

I also check the BHL RSS feed weekly for titles held by MoBot, but scanned by other institutions, so I can create links for these titles in our catalogue as well. I’ve found that these links help both research and library staff.

TROPICOS
Tropicos is a botanical database created and maintained by the Bioinformatics Department here at MoBot, which organizes over 4,000,000 plant specimens and images. Tropicos contains all of the specimen data that has been accumulated in the Gardens’ electronic databases over the past 25 years, and is now available to the public. In Tropicos, you’re able to search by both specimen name and publication name (depending on what information you have available in your citation).
Tropicos and BHL are intimately linked: the OCR that helps identify species names in BHL “reports back” to Tropicos through an automatic data resolver, so ideally, when you look up specimens or citations in Tropicos, there should be a link out to BHL, directly to the page where the specimen is named.

Tropicos Citation Page

Citation Page in BHL, linked out from Tropicos

Unfortunately, BHL has gotten so big in recent years the automatic resolver doesn’t always work, and the links don’t always get made. I’m able to go in and add links to both Botanicus and BHL from both specific citations and publication pages. I don’t use Tropicos very often, so I rely on the Garden’s research staff to let me know when links are missing (and they do!).

I’ve been working with BHL almost since its inception, and it’s been a wonderful experience, and a lot of fun, seeing how it’s evolved and grown, not to mention meeting all the wonderful people who’ve worked on the project. I’m proud to work on such a project, knowing that we’re able to provide rare and necessary material to people who might otherwise not have a chance to study it.

I am a Metadata Librarian for the Biodiversity Heritage Library based at the Ernst Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. Under the auspices of Harvard librarians Connie Rinaldo and Joe DeVeer, I am responsible for complex cataloging of the MCZ Library’s significant natural history literature collection within Harvard’s integrated library system (known as HOLLIS) in order to provide precise bibliographic records that are imported to the BHL portal via XML pages. In order to accomplish this and to facilitate comprehensive intellectual access, I enhance minimal-level records to provide in-depth bibliographic descriptions, as well as name, series and subject authority control according to international, national and local Harvard standards.  I also resolve problems of incorrect, incomplete or conflicting bibliographic and authority data in order to facilitate navigability to content in HOLLIS and the BHL portal.

I see my job as a blend of “old” and “new” librarianship skills – I catalog in MARC, but I help facilitate knowledge accessibility for the Harvard community through HOLLIS and for the BHL community through the BHL portal, although all communities can partake of each other’s public finding aids. My goals are to improve ease of access for all biodiversity and natural history researchers through the promotion of accurate and complete digital catalog records.  The BHL taxonomy provides important search capability, but providing subject access and links to BHL records through HOLLIS provides another avenue for search means and provides facilitation for improved research use.  This access is influenced by information organization and cataloging relationships, which I endeavor to provide.

For various reasons, quite a few bibliographic records in HOLLIS have not been upgraded to local, national or international standards.  The Harvard libraries’ 19th and 20th century card catalog records were retrospectively converted into digital online catalog records during the 1990s, but considering there are over 13 million entries within HOLLIS, many of these records contained less-than-full information, what are colloquially known as core-level or “stub” records.  These records were always meant to be temporary at best – just a placeholder where a record might contain a main entry and title, and a holding location, but very little else.

One example of this is shown here, a two-volume text and atlas set of the paleontologist Fridolin von Sandberger’s work, Die Land-und Süsswasser-Conchylien der Vorwelt, published in 1875:

This record exhibits very basic and incomplete information; there is author, title and publisher information, a physical description in terms of number of pages, a perfunctory general note, the HOLLIS record number, and the holding location here at the Ernst Mayr Library. All well and good, but obviously this record has a few problems. Besides the need to link the entry to its corresponding BHL record, there are no subject headings, there is a bibliography and index that needs to be noted, punctuation and physical descriptors need to be upgraded to contemporary cataloging rule standards (i.e., Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed., etc.), and most egregiously, the author’s name is misspelled!

To rectify these problems, I employed a few steps. I first checked OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) through its Connexion program to see if there were more complete records held by other reputable repositories. In this case there was a good one, so I overlaid the new record via a Z39.50 protocol over the original incomplete record in HOLLIS. I then compared the bibliographic information with the scanned BHL version of the book; if necessary, I sometimes consult the physical copy from our Library stacks. I then made necessary changes to the record to reflect the Library’s holding. I also consulted the Library of Congress Name Authorities to check the authorized heading for Dr. von Sandberger’s name. Finally, I attached a holdings record link to the corresponding BHL record, making it quick and easy for researchers to go straight to the digital copy and begin reading. The final markup in HOLLIS now looks like this:

Note there is a properly-spelled author with his birth and death dates, a more complete physical description of the volumes, subject access, and an internet link to the BHL record.  In addition, the BHL record now looks like this:

One note about the subjects, of which there are only a couple and they seem very broad: in a comprehensive work such as this, the taxonomy for subject headings would be very extensive, and a massive bibliographic record would result. I don’t claim to be a biological taxonomist, and am thankful for BHL’s uBio taxonomic name server that makes searches easier within the digitized texts for specific species or genera. Therefore, with the help of Library of Congress MARC 21 authorities, I chose “Mollusks, Fossil” and “Paleontology” as subject terms that would most accurately describe the work. In other cases, for a work that covers a more specific species, geographic area or geological epoch, I would include species, geographical or chronological subject terms, if possible.

Another aspect of my job is paginating Harvard’s holdings on the public portal consistent with BHL standards. Gilbert Borrego and JJ Ford have already enlightened us on the importance of the BHL pagination through previous blog posts, so I won’t describe the process as it would be redundant. However, my intent is to help direct researchers to the materials they need in the most efficacious manner, and streamline the navigability of the online texts and illustrations held by the Ernst Mayr Library that are in the BHL portal. With the outstanding assistance of our colleagues JJ, Katie Mullen and Gwen Henry, most of Harvard’s serial holdings on BHL have been thoroughly paginated. Pagination continues on monographic titles that the Library has prioritized and our faithful users have suggested. As Gilbert noted, we’re looking for ways to accurately automate the pagination procedure, but right now it’s still a manual method. But, hopefully, even with over 38 million pages and counting, everyone will eventually get a fully-paginated BHL.

I have a varied professional background and my earlier careers included having worked as assistants in fields such as environmental law and bookselling. However, since I earned my MSLIS from Simmons College in Boston, I have been fortunate to have worked on a number of different archival and metadata projects at such diverse places as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Doris Duke Foundation at Duke Farms, New Jersey. I have been at Harvard since 2006 where my initial position was as a project cataloger in the Fine Arts Library.

I have been working on the BHL project since February 2010.  I truly feel privileged to be part of the BHL team, and this is one of the most satisfying and gratifying positions I have ever had in my career. I am working with a great group of intelligent, talented, hard-working and dedicated colleagues, not only at Harvard, but within all the partner institutions, and it has been very rewarding. We have also been privileged to have some great and positive feedback by our researchers, who continually help us with suggestions of titles that have yet to be scanned or suggest ways to provide better access and information online. I am very proud to be working on this project and believe that such a significant resource will continue to be sustained and be kept strong for future biodiversity researchers.