BHL “Classic” as we often refer to ourselves, is pleased to introduce our latest global partner, BHL SciELO, from Brazil. Launched December 1st, 2010 in a public event at the Museum of Zoology of the University of Sao Paulo, BHL Brazil is implemented by the Scientific Electronic Library (SciELO) Program. Sharing BHL’s open access practices, they maintain an online multidisciplinary collection of quality journals which will total more than 700 titles by the end of this year.

The BHL-SciELO lauching event included scientific programming that shared information and experiences regarding challenges and next-steps for the BHL-SciELO Network Project. Abel L. Packer, Biodiversity Research Program Coordinater, spoke in depth about advancements already achieved and laid foundations for the next 3 years of work. Prominent Brazilian biodiversity related libraries will digitize their collections in the coming years according the principles, methodologies and procedures of the BHL and SciELO network.
Please join staff at BHL as we echo BHL Director Tom Garnett’s sentiments in the video posted above in warm welcome to our newest partners! 🙂

Originally uploaded by Smithsonian Libraries

Staff from the Biodiversity Heritage Library received the Outstanding Collaboration award from ALCTS on June 27, 2010.

The text of the citation read:

The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is awarding the ALCTS Outstanding Collaboration Citation to two distinguished libraries. This year’s recipients, in recognition of their outstanding collaborative partnerships are: the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the digitization component of the Encyclopedia of Life, which is a consortium of 12 major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries and research institutions organized to digitize, serve and preserve the legacy literature of biodiversity; and the Juliette K. and Leonard S. Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning N.Y.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), in a noteworthy collaborative effort, has fulfilled a scholarly need by providing open access to a large corpus of historical materials on biodiversity within the biological, ecological and environmental sciences. BHL has grown into an international collaborative digitization project by working with 12 major natural history museum libraries, botanical libraries and research institutions in the United States and United Kingdom. Through digitization and preservation, materials are made available, over an open access platform to scholars and researchers globally. The ability to locate, identify, retrieve the materials and, most importantly, to locate and identify specific organisms by their scientific names is seamless yet shows a high level of sophistication within BHL’s digital interface.

Pictured above, left to right are: Mary Case (President, ALCTS), Nancy E. Gwinn (Smithsonian Libraries), Tom Garnett (BHL/Smithsonian Libraries), Chris Freeland (BHL/Missouri Botanical Garden), Connie Rinaldo (Mayr Library, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University), Diana Duncan (The Field Museum, Chicago), Jane Smith (Natural History Museum, London), Matthew Person (Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library), Cynthia Whitacre (President Elect, ALCTS)

Thomas Garnett of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History heads a scanning and digitization group of encyclopedia workers. They are cooperating with the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a project through which 10 major libraries are scanning and placing on the Web pages from volumes that describe species. Some 80 million pages come from publications old enough to be in the public domain, and the scanners are starting with those.

The Feb. 2, 2008 issue of Science News includes an article by Susan Milius (“Biological Moon Shot“) on the Encyclopedia of Life and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. BHL member staff Tom Garnett and Martin Kalfatovic are quote in the article.

In talking about the vital business of opening library resources to far-flung scientists, Garnett rolls his eyes at the mention of a specialized source for historians of science that has become one of the library’s most popular downloads—the 1904 treatise Ants and Some Other Insects: An Inquiry Into the Psychic Powers of These Animals.

The NC State Insect Museum blog gave the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Finally got around to perusing my December, 2007 issue of Systematic Biology and saw this article by Godfray et al. about taxonomy and the Web. The authors provide nice summaries of emerging, alternative strategies for tackling the biodiversity and bioinformatics crises: CATE, uBio, DiGIR (to be replaced by TAPIR soon?), GBIF, Biodiversity Heritage Library initiative (how’s THAT for a tag cloud?!), ZooBank, TDWG, iSpecies, and Wikispecies (my least favorite; at least I am not yet totally convinced that this is a good model for taxonomy). I find it curious that the Encyclopedia of Life was barely mentioned (and never by name) in that article, especially given its high profile and funding level. I’ll have to remember to link some of these projects to our museum page, as we will undoubtedly be exploiting these resources and techniques to expose the data housed within our cabinets.
– Insect Museum blog

“The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) today released a suite of name services that provide deep links into the rich and growing online collection of biodiversity materials. The BHL is a consortium of major natural history and botanical libraries, all of whom are contributing appropriate materials to be digitized and mounted online. These items are also contributed to the Internet Archive, and therefore are freely available for anyone to download. This alone would be worthy of attention, but the name services released today provide an amazing service to anyone interested in the literature of biodiversity.”

Roy Tennant, Library Journal Blog, “Biodiversity Heritage Library Releases Name Services“

Roy Tennant discusses the BHL Name Service in his latest blog posting. Tennant also points out the usefulness of such tools in the digital library world.

The latest issue of Fine Books & Collections (November/December 2007) includes an excellent article on the Biodiversity Heritage Library. “Flora and Fauna: Creating a Global Library of Life, One Digital Page at a Time” by Rebecca Rego Barry and Scott Brown is an excellent overview of the BHL project.

Interviews with Doug Holland (Director, Missouri Botanical Garden Library), Graham Higley (Chair, BHL board and Head of Library and Information Services, Natural History Museum, London), and Tom Garnett (BHL Director).

Bibliophiles will enjoy the illustration from Herbarius (1484) from the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) Library collections.

Doug Holland also steps out from behind his desk to pose with a portion of the MBG rare book collection.