BHL and Specimen Collection Data: The needle in the Festuca stack Biodiversity_Next | 23 October 2019 | Leiden Martin R. Kalfatovic. BHL Program Director | Biodiversity Heritage Library. ORCID: 0000-0002-4563-4627. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.37787

1. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature
BHL and Specimen Collection Data
Martin R. Kalfatovic
ORCID: 0000-0002-4563-4627
@UDCMRK & @BHLProgDirector
Biodiversity_Next | 23 October 2019 | Leiden
The needle in the Festuca stack

2. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature

3. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature

4. BHL is an international consortium
making research literature openly
available to the world as part of a
global biodiversity community. BHL
was established in 2006 as a direct
response to the needs of the
taxonomic community for access to
taxonomic information in the early
literature.

5. Initially, BHL was established with ten
United States and United Kingdom
partners but has grown into a virtual
organization with more than 80 global
partners. Through this extensive
network of partners, over 57 million
pages of biodiversity literature has
been digitized and is available to
anyone with an internet connection.

6. Over 57 million pages of biodiversity
literature are openly available
through the BHL portal.
⚫ 150,989 titles
⚫ 248,391 volumes
⚫ 57,333,767 pages
⚫ (12 October 2019)

7. Content by Country: 2006-2019

8. Content by City: 2006-2019

9. by City: 2006-2019

10. ⚫ 8.5m users to date
⚫ 130,000 per month
⚫ 243 countries &
territories
1) London
2) New York
3) Chicago
4) Sydney
5) Paris
6) Melbourne
7) Mexico City
8) Berlin
9) New Delhi
10) Washington
BHL Users: 2007-2019

11. ACTIVE RESEARCH CENTER
⚫ BHL is an active research
center enabling access to
scientific data in archival
material as well as from the
digitized, published literature.
ENHANCING WORK
⚫ By enhancing the daily work of
Smithsonian and Harvard
research, BHL provides a
global network of researchers
with a digital library of content
and services.

12. DATA
⚫ Data in the Biodiversity
Heritage Library (BHL)
describes collections held in
the world's major museums
within the organized literature
that has been digitized.

13. DATA
⚫ Data in the Biodiversity
Heritage Library (BHL)
describes collections held in
the world's major museums
within the organized literature
that has been digitized.

14. Unpublished field notes,
correspondence and other
materials deposited in BHL enable
researchers to connect historical
information that is physically held
in different member archives.
Harvard’s Museum of
Comparative Zoology (MCZ) has
added links to its database for
ledgers, field notes, transcriptions
and published literature, many
from BHL, to reinforce
connections between specimens
and historical sources.

16. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature
Still, it is not easy to find
specific collections
information in the
nonsemantically tagged
BHL content.
Finding specific
collections information
in the non-semantically
tagged BHL content is
difficult ...

17. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature

18. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature
BHL is actively
incorporating tools
including DOI's and full-text
search, to improve finding
and linking to museum
specimen, geographic and
taxonomic information.
The BHL API is a set of
REST-like web services that
can be invoked via HTTP
queries (GET/POST requests)
or SOAP. Responses can be
received in one of three
formats: JSON, XML, or XML
wrapped in a SOAP envelope.

19. Full Text Search
Search across the text of all 57+ million pages in BHL!
Search results display hits for search terms within both
the bibliographic information + the full text of books in BHL.
Filter search results by content type, publication date, subject,
language, and author with new faceted browsing.
Use “search inside” to search for terms within a book you
are viewing.

20. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature
Full-Text Searching Search results
display hits for search terms
within both the bibliographic
information + the full text of books
in BHL.
Filter search results by content
type, publication date, subject,
language, and author with new
faceted browsing.
Use “search inside” to search for
terms within a book you are
viewing.

21. Future: BHL 2020+

22. BHL is the largest repository of
biodiversity literature
… but how can it be more useful?
• Prioritize curation of existing content
• Enhance metadata
• Provide more consistent use of persistent
identifiers
• Develop new tools and services to maximize
machine use of BHL content and facilitate linking
• Integrate BHL more deeply in the wider library
community ecosystems (human and technical)

23. Free & Open Access to
Biodiversity Literature
Martin R. Kalfatovic
ORCID: 0000-0002-4563-4627
@UDCMRK & @BHLProgDirector
Dank je!