2018 BHL Program Director’s Report: Secretariat & Technical Update. Martin R. Kalfatovic. 2018 BHL Annual Meeting. Los Angeles, CA. 14 March 2018.

1. 2018 BHL Program
Director’s Report
Secretariat & Technical Update
Martin R. Kalfatovic
VIAF ID: 32094717 (Personal) | ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4563-4627 (Personal)
BHLProgDirector@Twitter.com
14 March 2018 | 2018 BHL Annual Meeting
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2. To all who come to this happy
place: Welcome. BHL is your
land. Here age relives fond
memories of the past, and here
youth may savor the challenge
and promise of the future. BHL
is dedicated to the ideals, the
dreams, and the hard facts that
have created the World, with
the hope that it will be a
source of joy and inspiration
to all.
Walt Disney (not), July 17, 1955

3. Secretariat | Smithsonian Libraries
BHL GOVERNANCE
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Martin R. Kalfatovic
Program Manager
Carolyn Sheffield
Collections
Manager
Bianca Crowley
Outreach &
Communication
Manager
Grace Costantino

4. Secretariat Update
Activity Highlights in 2017
Google Analytics Dashboard reports for Members
Relaunching the Blog
Class is Email Marketing. Program is:
University of Denver: Communication Management
(Concentration: Marketing); Program leading to
a Graduate Certificate) (Grace Costantino)

5. Secretariat Update
• Participated in SI’s Brainstorming Session on Global Health. 6 April 2017.
• Met with Wendy Pryor, Head of Digital and Emerging Technologies from Museums Victoria, the BHL
Australia lead institution, during her site visit to Smithsonian Libraries. 14 April 2017.
• Participated in Earth Optimism Summit in Washington, DC. 21-23 April 2017.
• Attended 2017 SPNHC Conference in Denver, CO. 18-24 June 2017.
• Participated in the BHL Tech Meeting. 12-14 September 2017
• Attended NDSR Capstone event at Library of Congress. 20 September 2017.
• Along with NDSR Resident Pam McClanahan, met with staff and leadership from Folger Shakespeare
Library to discuss strategies for user needs analysis and setting technological priorities. 13
December 2017.
• Participated in the BCoN Data Integration and Attribution Workshop hosted at the University of
Kansas, Lawrence. 13-14 February 2018.
Carolyn Sheffield
8 BHL Related Meetings

6. Secretariat Update
 Building Botanical Literature Collections for Global Use: Highlights from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, presented as part
of the symposium Botanical contributions from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at the XIX International Botanical Congress,
Shenzhen, China. 25 July 25 2017
 Building the Biodiversity Heritage Library Through Standards and Content as part of the symposium Botanical contributions from
the Biodiversity Heritage Library: A Focus on Africa at the XXI Congress of the Association for the Taxonomic Study of the
Flora of Tropical Africa (AETFAT), Kenya. 19 May 2017.
 Inspiring Discovery Through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge. Embassy of the United States of America in Nairobi, Kenya.
20 May 2017.
 Free & Open Access to Biodiversity Literature: An Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Mpala Research Centre. 22
May 2017.
 Presented a BHL Instructional Overview at Library of Congress. 1 June 2017.
 BHL's Feedback Tools and User Surveys: Investigating User Needs for Data in Digital Libraries presented as part of the
symposium 500 Years of Big Data from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at the TDWG 2017 Annual Conference in Ottawa, Ontario.
October 2017.
 Biodiversity Heritage Library: User informed priorities for improving research efficiency in open science. Invited
presentation at BCoN Data Integration and Attribution Workshop, 13-14 February 2018.
Carolyn Sheffield
7 BHL Presentations

7. Secretariat Update
 Organized BHL booth at the Earth Optimism Summit in Washington, D.C. (21-23 April 2017). Booth staffed by
volunteers from BHL, Smithsonian Libraries and Library of Congress and visited by over 250 attendees.
 Hosted 2 interns in the Spring: Marketing Intern (Carolina Murcia) and Educational Resources Intern
(Constanza Hasselmann).
 Carolina created over 500 products for the BHL CafePress store and helped develop marketing graphics.
 Constanza created a contest challenging high school students to create a zoo using references in BHL
for species information. Contest ran in the A.P. Biology classes at West Springfield High School in
Virginia in May-June 2017.
 Worked with Joel to migrate the BHL blog to WordPress
 Continued work on Graduate Certificate in Communication Management at the University of Denver. Will
graduate in June 2018.
 Used skills learned in Web Analytics class to implement process to gather partner-specific usage data in BHL
and create Member analytics dashboards.
Grace Costantino
BHL Highlights

8. Secretariat Update
 Facebook Live Event: "Celebrating Gesner." 24 March 2017. Smithsonian Libraries, Washington, DC.
 Annual Smithsonian Weekend. "Inspiring Discovery through Global Access to Biodiversity Literature." 13 May
2017. Smithsonian, Washington, DC.
 Podcast Interview: The Not Old Better Show. "Women in Science: 250 Years of Trailblazers." 5 June 2017.
 Smithsonian Associates "Rise of Women in Science" Public Event. "Early Women in Science: Free Resources from
the Biodiversity Heritage Library." 10 July 2017. Smithsonian, Washington, DC.
 University of North Carolina LIS Event. "Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library." 19 October
2017. Smithsonian Libraries, Washington, DC.
 Facebook Live Event: "Seeds in the Stacks." 3 November 2017. National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD.
 Federal Depository Library Program Academy Webinar Series. "Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage
Library." 29 November 2017.
 FEDLINK Great Escapes. "Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library." 15 February 2018. Smithsonian
Libraries, Washington, DC.
Grace Costantino
8 BHL Presentations

9. Secretariat Update
 BHL Search Optimism: strategies for information discovery via the Biodiversity Heritage Library April 21,
2017. NH Main Library training rooms
 Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Academy webinar: An Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage
Library” November 29, 2017. Webinar online with 56 attendees
 BHL received about the same amount of service requests for 2017 (1,532) as it did in 2016 (1,524). However,
BHL Staff are demonstrating steady progress using the Gemini system more and more. In 2017 Staff submitted
50% of all issues received, an 8% increase from the previous year. Better yet, Staff resolved 26% more
issues in 2017 than they did in 2016 at a record high of 1,381!
 Bianca continues to answer an average of 30 reference questions per month with 10% FTE dedicated to Gemini
system triage.
 Bianca is most proud of her work to onboard BHL’s newest consortium partners and provide ad hoc training and
support when digitization workflow and metadata questions come up. Working with partners 1:1, she has helped
to increase understanding of BHL’s digitization and curation processes as well as promote greater
participation in BHL’s various back end collection management systems.
Bianca Crowley
BHL Highlights

10. Secretariat Update
 ALA Midwinter, Denver, CO, 9-13 February 2017
 SIL 50th @ STRI, Panama City, Panama, 24-25 January 2018
 Botany and Digitization Meeting, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 8 December
2017
 BHL Executive Committee Meeting, London, 30 November-1 December 2017
 ICSTI Fall Meeting, Washington, 26 October 2017
 NDP at 3: Envisioning the Next Three Years of the National Digital Platform, Crystal City,
VA, 17 October 2017
 GBIF 24, Helsinki, 23-29 September 2017
 BHL NDSR and Technical Meeting, 12-15 September 2017
 ALA Annual Conference, Chicago, 22-27 June 2017
 2017 Open Scholarship Initiative, Washington, DC, 18-21 April 2017
 RDA Ninth Plenary, Barcelona, 5-7 April 2017
 ICSTI Annual Meeting, Barcelona, 4 April 2017
Martin R. Kalfatovic
12 BHL Related Meetings

11. Secretariat Update
 Expanding Access for the Local and Global Increasing Access & Empowering Global Biodiversity Research through the
Biodiversity Heritage Library. 2018 Ohio Natural History Conference. Cleveland Museum of Natural History. 24
February 2018.
 The Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG): Opportunities for Collaboration and Participation. With
contributions from Wouter Addink, James A Macklin, and Dimitris Koureas. CNI Fall 2017 Membership Meeting.
Washington, DC. 12 December 2017.
 A Vast Library of Life: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Aim, Scope & Challenges of Research Museums: An
Exchange between the Smithsonian Institution & Leibniz Association. Washington, DC. 30 October 2017.
 “The Gift of Time”: Impact through Open: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Bracing for Impact: Digitizing
Collections to Change Lives. 2017 Smithsonian Digitization Fair. Washington. 19 October 2017.
 How Did We Get Here from There? The Origin Story of The Biodiversity Heritage Library. 2017 Library Leaders
Forum. Internet Archive. San Francisco. 13 October 2017.
 How Did BHL Get to Big Data? TDWG 2017. Ottawa, Canada. 3 October 2017.
 The Biodiversity Heritage Library: Empowering Discovery through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge. XIX
International Botanical Congress. Shenzhen, China. 25 July 2017.
Martin R. Kalfatovic
14 BHL Related Presentations

12. Secretariat Update
 Digital Programs & Initiatives @ Smithsonian Libraries: Scholarly Communications | Digital Library | Biodiversity Heritage
Library. Presentation for the National Library of Medicine Staff. Smithsonian Libraries. Washington, DC. 29 June 2017
 Free & Open Access to Biodiversity Literature: An Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Presentation for Natural
and Physical Sciences Library Staff. Smithsonian Libraries. Washington, DC. 14 June 2017.
 Overview of the Biodiversity Heritage Library: Recent Activities. Inaugural Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference.
Digital Data and the North American Nodes of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Co-sponsored by the University of
Michigan and iDigBio. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 5 June 2017.
 Free and Open Access to Biodiversity Literature: An Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Library of Congress. 1
June 2017.
 The Biodiversity Heritage Library Empowering Discovery through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge. XXI Congress of the
Association for the Taxonomic Study of the Flora of Tropical Africa (AETFAT). Nairobi, Kenya. 18 May 2017.
 The Story of Engagement: Outreach Strategies at the Biodiversity Heritage Library. With Grace Costantino. XXI Congress of the
Association for the Taxonomic Study of the Flora of Tropical Africa (AETFAT). Nairobi, Kenya. 18 May 2017.
 A Vast Library of Life: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. With Grace Costantino. National Library Board, Singapore. 17 March
2017.
Martin R. Kalfatovic
14 BHL Related Presentations

13. Secretariat Update
 Martin R. Kalfatovic
 16 Presentations
 646 people reached
 Carolyn Sheffield
 5 Presentations
 139 people reached
 Grace Costantino
 16 Presentations
 1,792 people reached
 Bianca Crowley
 8 Presentations
 134 people reached
Total Audience / Secretariat
Meetings + Presentations

14. Secretariat Update
 Facebook Tour of the Smithsonian Libraries’ Cullman
Library: Gesner’s Birthday
 9,481 people reached
 Podcast on Women in Science
 327,000 people reached
 Facebook Tour of the National Agriculture Library
 4,349 people reached
Grace Costantino
Major Online Outreach

15. BHL is a Global Consortium
20MEMBERS
AS OF MARCH 2018
20AFFILIATES
80+ WORLDWIDE PARTNERS

16. Growth of the BHL Partnership
• BHL Members approved the Affiliate application of the
Oak Spring Garden Foundation
• BHL Members approved the Member application for Yale
University.
• BHL Members approved the Affiliate application for
Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
• BHL Members approved the Member application for the
Museum fur Naturkunde, Berlin
2 New Affiliates
2 New Members

17. Growth of the BHL Partnership
• BHL China
• BHL Egypt
• BHL SciELO
3 Global Partners Converted
to BHL Affiliates

18. 54+MILLION
PAGES
TITLES VOLUMES
135,000+ 223,000+
181+MILLIONINSTANCES OF TAXONOMIC NAMES
750+IN-COPYRIGHT TITLES LICENSED FOR BHL
AGREEMENTS
WITH 330+
LICENSORS
*Stats as of March 2018

19. Growth of the BHL Content
CY 2016 CY 2018
Items 26,534 Items 21,271
Pages 2,667,741 Pages 3,026,760
Delta
Items = +5,263 (~25%)
Pages = -359,019 (~12%)

20. Growth of the BHL Content

21. 7+MILLION
TOTAL USERS TO DATE
AVERAGE MONTHLY
USERS113,000+
13+ MILLION
TOTAL WEBSITE VISITS TO DATE
AVERAGE MONTHLY
VISITS195,000+
VISITS FROM
243COUNTRIES &
TERRITORIES
*Stats as of February 2018

22. Growth of BHL Users
Dimension MAR-MAR 2016/17 MAR-MAR 2017/18 Delta
Users 1,158,572 1,209,264 4.38%
New Users 1,128,535 1,172,751 3.92%
Sessions 2,137,795 2,388,527 11.73%
Sessions/User 1.98 1.85 7.04%
All dimensions show
positive growth

23. Growth of BHL Users
Dimension MAR-MAR 2016/17 MAR-MAR 2017/18 Delta
Pageview 8,074,310 8,674,251 7.43%
Pages/Session 3.78 3.63 -3.85%
Avg. Duration 00:05:08 00:04:22 -14.96%
Bounce Rate 52.90% 54.35% 2.75%
Mixed dimensions

24. Growth of BHL Users
Top Countries by Users: Year to Year
Country Users
United States 322,605
India 82,109
United Kingdom 67,994
Germany 57,849
Canada 43,843
India has moved into second
place in total users

25. Growth of BHL Users

26. Growth of BHL Users

27. Growth of BHL Users
Top Cities by Users: Year to Year
City Users
London 16,240
New York 13,288
Beijing 11,426
Melbourne 10,182
Sydney 9,828
“Not Identified” = 81,737

28. Growth of BHL Users
“Not Identified” = 81,737

29. Growth of BHL Users
Growth of Mobile
2016 vs 2017
• Desktop -1.24% (902,518 users)
• Mobile +25.67% (242,158 users)
• Tablet +1.81% (57,104 users)

30. Growth of BHL Users
Mobile Operating Systems
MAR 2016 vs MAR 2017
• 57% Android
• 38% iOS
• 5% other (including 91 lonely
SymbianOS users)

31. User Acquisition
Organic Search: 49%
39% use book viewer
Direct 23%
32% use book viewer
Referral non-social 21%
32% use book viewer
Social7%
51%usebookviewer
Organic search is a method for entering one or
a plurality of search items in a single data
string into a search engine. Organic
search results are listings on search engine
results pages that appear because of their
relevance to the search terms, as opposed to
their being advertisements. Traffic that occurs when a user finds
you through a site other than a major
search engine
Any traffic where the referrer or
source is unknown.
Trafficfromasocialnetwork,such
asFacebook,LinkedIn,Twitter,or
etc.

32. User Acquisition
… But Pinterest is #1 &
Facebook #7
Top Referral (non-social)
1. Wikipedia
2. Marine Species
3. Tropicos
4. IPNI
5. The Plantlist
6. GBIF

33. User Acquisition
… No Instagram / no links
Top Referral (Social)
1. Pinterest 48%
2. Facebook 28%
3. Twitter 15%
4. Blogger 1%
5. Tumblr 1%

34. Technical Advisory Group
BHL Technical Update
Martin R. Kalfatovic
BHL Program Director
Carolyn Sheffield
BHL Program Manager
Mike Lichtenberg
BHL Developer
Joel Richard
Smithsonian Libraries
Susan Lynch
The New York
Botanical Garden

35. BHL Technical Update
Wikispaces: RIP

36. BHL Technical Update
Top Priorities
1. Implement full text search in the user interface;
2. Develop ingest of existing transcription centers content;
3. Develop new process to allow assigning of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
specifically for articles;
4. Provide incremental changes to the BHL data structure to implement KBART
(Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) metadata standard;
5. Continue to monitor website performance, performance basic troubleshooting and
maintenance;

37. BHL Technical Update
BHL Dark Storage:
Smithsonian
• Year 1 (2016) BHL: 109 TB
• Year 2 (2017) BHL: 122 TB
• Year 3 (2018) BHL: 135 TB
• Year 4 (2019) BHL: 148 TB
• Year 5 (2020) BHL: 162 TB

38. BHL Technical Update
Server/Database Sizes
ElasticSearch Index Sizes
• Production – 338GB | QA –
324GB
SQL Server Database Sizes
• BHL – 185GB
• BHLAuditArchive – 115GB
• BHLImport – 70GB
• IA Analysis – 80GB
SQL Server Database Sizes
(cont’d)
• BHL – 185GB
• BHLAuditArchive – 115GB
• BHLImport – 70GB
• IA Analysis – 80GB
OCR Storage Size
• 1.5TB (est.)

39. BHL Technical Update
Full Text Search Update
ElasticSearch Index Sizes
• Production – 338GB | QA –
324GB
Full Text Search Timeline
• Live in Beta now
• External user testing
ongoing
• BHL staff testing call
1 April
• Go live May 2018
Text ... . H. HJRV7ITZ THE DANCING MOUSE THE
MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ...
Text ... . THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR SERIES. VOLUME I
THE DANCING MOUSE A Study in Animal Behavior ...
Text ... results of my investigation ; second, to
give as complete an account of the
dancing mouse as a ...
Text ... mouse I have attempted to lay as much
stress upon the de- velopment of my methods of
work as ...
Text ... ILLUSTRATIONS xvii LITERATURE ON THE
DANCING MOUSE xix CHAPTER I CHARACTERISTICS ...
Title The dancing mouse;

40. BHL Technical Update
BHL Load Testing Report
 In 2017, at peak load one PageView occurred every
1.5 seconds.
 Search PageViews made up 13.5% of all PageViews.
 Assuming 13.5% of the peak PageViews were searches,
the peak search load was one PageView every 10.7
seconds… about 6 searches per minute.

41. BHL Technical Update
BHL Load Testing Results
Test Total
Requests
Time
Elapsed
Max Observed
CPU
Max Observed Memory
Use
Max Observed
Load
Ave Response
Time (ms)
1 User 830 26:58 18% 75% 3.27 1948
2 Users 1660 26:38 43% 81% 5.34 1921
3 Users 2490 30:24 59% 81% 6.14 2191
4 Users 3320 36:08 66% 92% 8.22 2592
5 Users 4150 42:01 64% 94% 8.62 3011
There were five concurrent users working through
830 URLs at the same time. At any one time, there
were 5 simultaneous search requests active.

42. BHL Technical Update
BHL Load Final Results
• Despite the Max Observed Load of 8.22 for the 4-User test, the
sustained load was closer to 5.0 for that test. Rarely did the
load pass above 7.0.
• The 5-User test had a sustained load of 6.0, and it was not
unusual for the load to be at or above 7.0.
• No 6-User test was performed, one can extrapolate that that is
the level at which the recommended persistent load of 7.0 would
be reached. This represents a level of search activity that
significantly exceeds what BHL has historically seen, the
ElasticSearch installation should handle the expected load.

43. BHL Technical & NDSR Meeting
St. Louis | September 2017

44. BHL Technical Update
BHL Genesis

45. BHL Technical Update
Server Architecture

46. BHL V.2 Schematic

47. BHL Technical Update
BHL V.2 Topics
Key component questions include:
• BHL active image/file store (what is the platform? what's sustainable? what's
best for IIIF?)
• BHL dark storage (that's being handled by the larger Smithsonian IT infracture)
• BHL computable data store (what's the best platform? modularlized? partially on
GitHub?)
• BHL UI (multilingual? How to handle visual resources)
• Data model refactoring (base the core on the Europeana Data Model)
• BHL partner tools/services (Macaw, transcription ingest, namefinding)
• BHL user tools/services (BHL transcription module, wikicite/wikidata)
• Should platform/code should be as open and as "turnkey" as possible, very
little special BHL customization

48. There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of everyday
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow's just a dream away
Walt Disney Company
Atlas zu der Reise im nördlichen Afrika.

49. Thank You!
Questions?
Martin R. Kalfatovic
14 March 2018 | 2018 BHL Annual Meeting
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