Building for Demand: The Growth of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Martin R. Kalfatovic. 2014 EOD Conference. Innsbruck, Austria. 11 April 2014.

2. Guten Morgen!
Huomenta!
Bonjour!
God morgon!
Dobro jutro!
¡Buenos días!
Goedemorgen!
Доброе утро!
Dobrý den!
Bore da!
God morgen!
Bom dia!
Godmorgen!
Dzień dobry!
Καλημέρα!
Jó reggelt!
Доброе утро!
Good Morning!

3. A dangerous idea … circa 370 BCE

4. You have invented an elixir not of
memory, but of reminding; and you
offer your pupils the appearance of
wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will
read many things without instruction
and will therefore seem to know many
things, when they are for the most part
ignorant and hard to get along with,
since they are not wise, but only
appear wise.
Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. Fowler, 1925. 275a

7. The Universal Library or the Library of Babel?

8. Kurd Lasswitz
Die Universalbibliothek
The Universal Library
1901
Jorge Luis Borges
La biblioteca de Babel
The Library of Babel
1941
The vast, but ultimately finite library ...

9. • 100 characters (Western
European languages, plus
spaces and some punctuation)
• Each line has 50 spaces
• Each page is 40 lines long
• Each book is 500 pages long
• Total Books: 100 1,000,000
• Googolplex: 1 followed by a
googol (10 100) zeros

10. dsoydrebnefdsellnhvaaipevls oadisaedhoholnarmea
dlhecrositnsoritln gdustoaeaeb ossibrseltlmlie ey f
tkstmdd eoiicai ytjtymniemruincrerlrc kym sdgklemy
ecc poslr nnpz lrmpdcgeebf tetlealnm ceekctn sa
oseesese erlsede c rotoire nhndlidd irb nwsrpeedsrc
tey a lbneeu epon e cv mm tjn tarreohaaosimnicuse
lvyubsu gurec egrll gnruveielrreuie w izbegii tckrne
aseieoogrmia hmiuhtydaesdat uketwe te mnha egs
foueirr tirstnnyriytuodnar inaon itaonlaai osn ral fd
nurroysceo rteepcrn nrswrdstlr dt beeod sracpope Oh
tiempo tus pirámides irhesrksesan ueada cte
osamnec u gn bri seo aaircdgir kgielddaltneasfsdi n
rwtlira etgtu erdoi nnte poycd rmogn t rdaebodpc ha tcl
asrlceao usc tiosdrbaesci retiigvnooneeoe e m a b y
fcoiihlha dcguo cdiem o pnz aitfehn sigtssipc isa

11. "So, I do not subscribe to the Universal Library,
for it is impossible to pick out the sense from
the nonsense that is right from the wrong."
Lasswitz (1901)
"Also, ich abonniere nicht auf die
Universalbibliothek, denn es ist ja unmöglich,
den Sinn aus dem Unsinn, das Richtige aus
dem Falschen herauszusuchen."

12. Today, we are rapidly approaching the
creation of the universal digital library ...

13. "Ich will etwas Vernünftiges schaffen ...
ich werde die Form mit Stoff erfüllen."
Lasswitz (1901)
"I want to create something worthwhile
... I will meet the form with substance."

14. The reader will not find here that a bridge has been
completed from things as they are to things as they
may be, but he will find a structure on which he can
take some steps out from the here and now and dimly
descry the may be on the other side.
Verner W. Clapp, Introduction to
Libraries of the Future by J.C.R. Licklider (1965)

15. What changed the ebook scene was not the actual
device but the emergence of a networked
ecosystem of which the device was just one
component. The significant thing about Amazon's
Kindle was not that it was an e-reader but that it was
a networked device to which texts could be quickly
and effortlessly downloaded from Amazon's online
store.
John Naughton in The Guardian (8 Feb 2014)

16. So how to you create a well-formed digital
library from the vast amount of data
available?

17. The cultivation of
natural science cannot
be efficiently carried
on without reference
to an extensive library
Charles Darwin, et al
(1847)
The Wherefore of BHL

18. Who lives/lived here?

19. Linnaeus classified ~ 15,000 plants and animals
in the course of his publication

20. Today, the EOL lists 1,303,873 species pages

21. Specimen collections
Databases
Publications
Observations
‘Gray’ literature
Index cards
Field notebooks
Taxonomic Impediment

22. In earlier times, all the information about
species could be found in one place

23. So what if we could tackle just
a bit of this problem … books?

24. The Wherefore of BHL
In any well-appointed
Natural History Library
there should be found
every book and every
edition of every book
dealing in the remotest
way with the subjects
concerned.
Charles Davies Sherborn
Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922

25. 2006 BHL is created
10 US and UK partners

26. Technology Library Science
Biodiversity Heritage Library

27. Problems of Mass Digitization of Library Materials

28. Mass digitization of Smithsonian Libraries collections aligns with
the overall Smithsonian digitization strategy and remains a
center of excellence for rapid digitization at the SI
Problems of Library Metadata

29. Reclassification of “Sperm Whale” over time
Problems of Taxonomic Science

30. 19 Members and Affiliates
16 Members
• American Museum of Natural History
• California Academy of Sciences Library
• Cornell University Library
• Harvard University Botany Libraries
• Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of
Comparative Zoology
• Library of Congress
• Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution Library
• Missouri Botanical Garden Library
• National Library Board (Singapore)
• Natural History Museum, London
• The New York Botanical Garden
• Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
• Smithsonian Libraries
• United States Geological Survey Libraries
• Washington University of St. Louis
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
3 Affiliates
•Academy of Natural Sciences
•The Field Museum
• Natural History Museum, LA County

31. Secretariat and Technical Staff
August 2011Program Director
Program Manager
Collections Coordinator
Technical Director
Programmer
Data Analyst

34. Global BHL
BHL Central | BHL Africa | BHL Australia | BHL Brasil | BHL
China | BHL Egypt | BHL Europe | BHL Singapore

35. Global BHL Steering Committee
August 2011 Vice Chair SecretaryChair
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Global Governance

37. Major External
Sources of Funding

38. • Secretariat and admin costs
• Technical development
• Central funds for scanning etc.
• Total:
– ~US$583,000 / year
• Smithsonian funding
• Grants to member institutions
• Annual dues (US$10,000)
from Members
• Donations (~US$5,000
year/average)
INCOME
EXPENSES
Funding Sources
Central Expenses

39. 2013 BHL Member In-kind Staff FTE & Costs (incomplete)
15.801 FTE from the 15 member institutions
$1,374,717 staff and other costs
(does not include Secretariat or Technical staff)

40. Fundraising Plans
Continue to build our pipeline of
annual donors
Continue to use social media for
“soft asks” repurposing text/themes
of appeals
Work with the Smithsonian’s Office
of Foundation Relations to put
together major gift ($100K-500K)
proposals to several foundations
Continue other grant opportunities
for partners

42. 43,157,045 pages
134,453 items
74,412 titles
8 April 2014
Content Growth
2007-2014

43. 2007
2014
146,798 visitors | November 2012
User Statistics: 2013 – 2014 (March)
Unique Visitors: 664,645 / 55,387 per month
Page Views: 3,741,640
New vs. Returning: 54.94% vs. 45.06%

44. 233 countriesUsers in 245 Countries

45. TheMachineIsUs/ingUs
<Response
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-
instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<Status>ok</Status>
<Result>
<Item>
<ItemID>16800</ItemID>
<Volume/>
<Contributor>MBLWHOI Library</Contributor>
<Sponsor>MBLWHOI Library</Sponsor>
<Language>English</Language>
<LicenseUrl/>
<Rights/>
<DueDiligence/>
<CopyrightStatus/>
<CopyrightRegion/>
</Item>

46. 87,594 mobile visits (32% iPad)
March 2013 – March 2014
35,231 mobile visits (45% iPad)
March 2012 – March 2013

47. 36,928 visits from
social media to BHL in
2013
13,400 visits from BHL’s own
blog, Facebook, and Twitter
accounts

48. 24+ million total views | 89K + images (March 2014)

50. Field Notes and Archival Materials

51. Increase agreements
with publishers of in
copyright materials
US Titles: 249
UK Titles: 69
TOTAL TITLES: 318
US Licensors: 92
UK Licensors: 41
TOTAL LICENSORS: 133
October 2013

52. Awards
2013 ComputerWorld Award
2013 Council of Botanical and Horticulture
Libraries
2011 Thackray Medal by the Society for the
History of Natural History
2010 ALCTS award for outstanding
collaboration

54. “
T
h
a
n
k
y
o
u
m
u
c
h
f
o
r
y
o
u
r
What an absolutely
wonderful site. It is a
treasure trove of
information. Thank you!

55. “
T
h
a
n
k
y
o
u
m
u
c
h
f
o
r
y
o
u
r
I really appreciate your work.
The Biodiversity Heritage
Library is an excellent resource
that regularly helps my
assistant and I obtain original
descriptions for plants .... I feel
so privileged to be working in a
day in age when such
resources are so readily
available and easy to obtain.

56. “
T
h
a
n
k
y
o
u
m
u
c
h
f
o
r
y
o
u
r
May I compliment you on
this splendid service? The
Library's invaluable for my
work on seasonal variability
of climate and vector-borne
disease in British India,
1875-1940.

57. I am thrilled with what I have
been able to find re: archaic
mammary embryology some
of which I had been hoping to
find at the National Library of
Medicine, and to get it
through your program was a
huge advantage

58. Looking Forward
In any well-appointed
Natural History Library
there should be found
every book and every
edition of every book
dealing in the remotest
way with the subjects
concerned.
Charles Davies Sherborn
Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922

59. There is grandeur in
this view of life, with
its several powers,
having been
originally breathed
into a few forms or
into one; and that,
whilst this planet has
gone cycling on
according to the fixed
law of gravity ...,

60. … from so simple
a beginning
endless forms
most beautiful
and most
wonderful have
been, and are
being, evolved.

61. Community / Partnership / Science / Content

62. Thank you! Danke!