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!  

An international ensemble of biodiversity-minded professionals recently gathered in Nairobi, Kenya for two weeks of trainings and conferences. From 24-26 September, 2015, fifteen representatives from eleven institutions throughout South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda attended a BHL Africa training workshop at the National Museums of Kenya. Following the workshop, 28 September – 1 October, 2015, the TDWG Annual Conference was held at the Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club in Nairobi.

The BHL Africa Workshop was an opportunity to provide training and help build capacity amongst the current signatories of the BHL Africa MOU. The workshop was funded as part of the 2015 JRS Biodiversity Foundation grant, awarded to the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), to facilitate the growth of BHL Africa.

“This workshop is yet another example of the exciting strides the BHL Africa libraries are making towards digitizing and providing open access to their unique and important collections,” said Robert Guralnick of the Board of Trustees, JRS Biodiversity Foundation.

Attendees at the BHL Africa Workshop at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.

Representatives from the National Museums of Kenya, the University of Nairobi, the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, the African Conservation Centre, the Kenya Wildlife Service, the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, The Uganda Society, the National Library of Uganda, the South African National Aquatic Biodiversity Institute, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, and the University of Pretoria attended the workshop. Training was provided by four BHL representatives from the U.S., including BHL’s Program Director, Martin Kalfatovic, Program Manager, Carolyn Sheffield, Outreach and Communication Manager, Grace Costantino, and Smithsonian Digital Collections Librarian, Jacqueline Chapman.

Trainings included an overview of the structure and governance of BHL; demoes of the BHL website and administrative functions; in-depth discussions about BHL collection scope, development, digitization and curation workflows, and metadata requirements; guidance on copyright and permissions issues; methods for communication and outreach collaboration; and intensive hands-on training for several BHL tools, including the issue tracking system Gemini and the digitization workflow tool Macaw.

BHL Africa workshop attendees enjoying the beautiful grounds at the National Museums of Kenya during a lunch break.

Chief among the discussion topics was a focus on building capacity within Africa and amongst current and future participating institutions. The goal of the workshop was to not only train attendees on the many aspects of BHL participation and workflows, but to ensure that attendees could return to their own institutions and provide training to their colleagues. There was also extensive discussion on the various ways that participants could share digitization equipment amongst institutions, ensuring efficiency and a responsible use of funds.

Following the workshop, Martin Kalfatovic, Anne-Lise Fourie (Head of BHL Africa and Assistant Director of SANBI Libraries), Carolyn Sheffield, and Jacqueline Chapman continued on to the TDWG 2015 conference where they were joined by BHL Technical Director William Ulate and the Vice Chair of the Global BHL Executive Committee, Dr. Jiri Frank.  On 1 October, BHL hosted a Symposium that provided updates on the BHL consortium in general; BHL Africa’s JRS-funded capacity-building initiatives; BHL workshops; BHL projects; and a special guest, Prabhakar Rajagopal, who presented on the participation in the India Biodiversity Portal.  The session was well-attended with 137 conference attendees in the audience.

We are excited to see such wonderful progress from our colleagues in Africa, and look forward to the growth of BHL Africa content in and contributions to BHL.