It is something wonderful
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The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a digital library of over 50 million pages of literature from natural history and biodiversity. It is a collaboration of 12 major natural history and botanical libraries. BHL provides open access to its literature and has over 800,000 annual visitors from over 200 countries seeking information on systematics, taxonomy, and nomenclature. Users access BHL directly as well as through links from sites like Encyclopedia of Life, Wikipedia, and search engines. BHL is working to connect its literature to field notes, specimens, and other research to provide more integrated access to biodiversity information.
It is something wonderful
- 1. “It is something wonderful” the Biodiversity Heritage Library: a Science Library for Global Learning Rebecca Morin User Services Librarian California Academy of Sciences
- 3. Members American Museum of Natural History (New York) Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia) California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco) Field Museum (Chicago) Natural History Museum (London) Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington) Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis) New York Botanical Garden (New York) Royal Botanic Garden, Kew Botany Libraries, Harvard University Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 3
- 4. Global Reach / Global Impact 4
- 5. Why? 5
- 6. Who Uses It? Usage 2010 • 837,000 Visits • 422,000 Unique Visitors • 4.2 Million Page Views • 221 Countries/Territories More than 80% of visitors seek information in • Systematics • Taxonomy 6 • Nomenclature
- 7. Multiple Means of Access • BHL: 18.65% • Referring Sites: 38.13% • EOL • Wikipedia • Tropicos • Smithsonian • BioOne • Animal Base • Search Engines: 43.12% Source: Google Analytics (Oct. 2010 – Jan. 2011) 7
- 9. Encyclopedia of Life/BHL Interface
- 10. EOL BHL PAGE LEVEL ACCESS @ THE TAXONOMIC NAME
- 11. BHL & OCLC 11
- 12. BHL & OCLC 12
- 13. BHL & OCLC 13
- 14. What Does BHL Do For Me? • Bibliographies • Name Searching • Taxonomic Intelligence • Complete Items • PDF Creation • APIs • Stable URLs 14
- 18. Linking Field Notes & Specimens “Connecting Content” will help us gather information from here… & 18
- 19. Linking Field Notes & Specimens & Literature …And connect it to literature in BHL 19
- 20. What Have We Learned? Researchers want article-level access 20
- 21. What Have We Learned? Users want contact 21
- 22. User Feedback 22
- 23. What Have We Learned? Give users options 23
- 24. Pay Attention to Users Feedback Nov. 2010 – Jan. 2011 • 370 user issues recorded • 46% scan requests • 62% resolved 63% of requests from 10 users BHL Use Oct. 2010 – Jan. 2011 • 292,304 visits • 1,586,562 pageviews • 137,900 unique visitors • 207 different countries/territories 24
- 25. “…For a student like me who is from one of the poorest countries on earth where there are not enough libraries and even the existing libraries do not have enough literature, it is something wonderful. Thanks to those people who created it.” Sajan Subedi BHL User
- 26. Thank You! Special Thanks To The Institute of Museum and Library Services Bianca Crowley, Martin Kalfatovic, Suzanne Pilsk & everyone else at BHL The “Connecting Content” Partners Danielle Castronovo rmorin@calcademy.org Twitter: @tiny_librarian
Editor's Notes
- #6: In other words, let’s think of EOL as a repository of natural history collections information. We can consider it our 21st century Wunderkammer.So, here’s the famous image of Ferrante Imperato’s 16th century cabinet (this is considered the first published image of such a thing, the genesis of the natural history museums where many of us work today)So, this is EOL– instead of a page for every species, let’s say there’s a place for every species…including some tiny dogs running around on the floor there.What we all know (and what Ferrante Imperato did as well) is that the study of these items involves more than just the objects themselvesSo, if this is EOL, Image from
- #9: Concept of EOL(a web page for every species on earth)Image from
- #26: The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a consortium of 12 natural history museum and botanical garden libraries, working together to digitize the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections.