Tagging BHL Marine Images at the Smithsonian

There are approximately 32,000 species of fish, representing the greatest species diversity of any vertebrate group. Mollusks, with around 85,000 extant species, constitute the largest marine phylum and about 23% of all named marine organisms. Crustaceans, with about 67,000 described species, are arthropods that range in size from .004 inches (Stygotantulus stocki) to over 12.5 feet (Japanese Spider Crab). The diverse algae group includes unicellular and multicellular organisms, such as seaweeds, dinoflagellates, red, green, brown, yellow and golden algae, and diatoms, to name a few.

Looking at the big picture, we know of over 210,000 marine species, though it is estimated that there are more than one million in total. It should come as no surprise to you that BHL has millions of pages of literature related to the topic of marine biodiversity. What you may not know is that we also have thousands of images of marine species in our Flickr.

We’ve written before about our mission to add species name tags to the images in our Flickr account so that users can not only search for and find illustrations of specific organisms, but also so that we can easily share these images with external projects like the Encyclopedia of Life. To accomplish this goal, we’ve not only created instructional material and encouraged our user community to take up the charge, but we’ve also hosted two tagging parties at the Smithsonian Libraries. On April 2, 2013, we hosted our third tagging party at the Smithsonian, in conjunction with both the Encyclopedia of Life and Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal. This time, we focused our event on a theme: Marine Biodiversity.

Attendees at the Tagging Party, adding tags! Photo by Gilbert Borrego.

At our tagging parties, we invite Smithsonian staff, including curators, volunteers, interns, fellows, and librarians, to gather in person for an hour and a half to help us add tags to images in a group setting. Since this was a themed event, we directed attendees to specific sets of marine images in need of tagging. We’re happy to say that the 17 people that attended the party made some good headway on the thousands of marine images that need tagging!

You can Help!

As mentioned, all of our tagging events thus far have been staff-only occasions. While we hope to hold public events in the future, hosted at various BHL member institutions, you can actually help us tag our images right now!

How?

If you’re looking at an image in Flickr for which you know the species name, simply click “add a tag” and input the name in the following format:

Taxonomy:Binomial=”Genus species”

Replace the “Genus Species” text with the actual binomial for the creature you are identifying and be sure to put quotation marks around the name as shown above. So, a complete tag would look like:

Taxonomy:Binomial=”Zea mays”

How can you identify the species if you don’t recognize it on sight? Many of our illustrations actually have the species name printed on the image itself. Simply transcribe that name into the machine tag format. If the name isn’t printed on the illustration, you may be able to find an identification in BHL. Click on the link below each image to view the book in BHL, then navigate through the text pages surrounding the image to see if the species identification is given. If so, input the name into the machine tag format in Flickr.

Example of an image with a machine tag and the link to that image in BHL. Click this image to enlarge.

Every image that is tagged with a species name machine tag will automatically be added to the BHL Collection in EOL and associated with the corresponding EOL species page.

Need more help? Check out the Tagging Instructions composed by the Encyclopedia of Life, send us feedback, post a comment on this blog, or write to us at [email protected]. We’d also love to hear from you about your experience adding tags and/or suggestions for making our instructional materials or process better!

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The Biodiversity Heritage Library now has its own collection of images in the Encyclopedia of Life! This collection is comprised of images that have been tagged with species name machine tags, relating the species depicted in each image. The collection currently comprises over 11,000 images representing over 10,000 taxa, and will continue to grow as additional illustrations are tagged in the BHL Flickr.

The BHL Flickr

By now, you’re no doubt aware of the Biodiversity Heritage Library Flickr, which provides free access to over 104,000 illustrations gleaned from the BHL collections. These images span over five hundred years and range in topic from fish to reptiles, mammals to birds, insects to mollusks, and everything in between!

Building the Collection: Tagging Images

To make it easier for you to search our Flickr collection and for us to share images with external websites like EOL, we’re adding species name machine tags to our images, and we’ve been encouraging you to help us do this.

A tag is basically a searchable keyword that you can add to an image to describe it, and a machine tag is a tag with special formatting to allow it to be read by computers. Thus, a species name machine tag is a tag that describes the species depicted in an image in a format that can be understood by computers.

When you add species name machine tags to our images, you as a user can not only search the BHL Flickr and retrieve any images tagged with a desired name, but these images can also automatically be uploaded to EOL and associated with the corresponding species page.

Example of an image from the BHL Flickr automatically associated with the EOL species page for Carduelis barbata, the Black-chinned Siskin, because a species name machine tag was added to the image in Flickr.

The format for species name machine tags is “taxonomy:binomial=Genus species,” where “Genus” and “species” are replaced with the particulars of the organism you’re describing. You can replace “binomial” with another taxonomic tag, such as “genus” or “family”, if you can only identify the organism at that level. Learn more about the Flickr tagging process and machine tag formats in our previous blog post.

The images in the new EOL Collection are images from the BHL Flickr that have a species name machine tag associated with them. Each time new images are tagged in the BHL Flickr, they will automatically be added to our collection in EOL, as well as associated with appropriate species pages.

You Can Help us Grow this Collection!

With over 104,000 images in our Flickr collection to date, and that number growing daily, it’s impossible for BHL staff to tag all of our images by ourselves. That’s why we need your help! You can help us by adding species name machine tags to our images in Flickr. All you have to have is a free Flickr account to add tags to BHL images.

Once you’re signed in to Flickr, browse our collection of images and when you see some with species you can identify, simply click “add a tag” and add the species name in the machine tag format (“Taxonomy:Binomial=Genus species”). Be sure to include the quotation marks around your machine tag.

Many images actually have the species name printed on the plate itself. In these cases, you can simply transcribe that name as a tag for the image. If the species is not identified on the plate, navigate to the book in BHL to find the associated description pages outlining the species depicted. We encourage you to tag the image with the species name provided by the book itself, but if that name is no longer valid, and you know the current, accepted name, feel free to add that name as an additional tag to the image.

Adding a species name machine tag to an image in the BHL Flickr. Click this image to enlarge for better viewing.

If there are multiple species depicted on an image, add a separate tag for each species depicted (or as many as you can identify). Learn more about tagging BHL images, and get additional tips, in our Guide.

Every time you add a species name machine tag to an image in our Flickr, you’re growing the BHL EOL Collection, as your tagged images will automatically be added to that collection.

We hope we’ve inspired you to help us identify life on earth, as portrayed through some of the most incredible scientific illustrations ever created! Keep exploring, and keep tagging!

Visit the BHL Image Collection on EOL today!