3. Consortium Participants
• Academy of Natural Sciences
• American Museum of Natural History
• California Academy of Sciences Library
• Cornell University Library
• Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology
• e Field Museum
• Harvard University Botany Libraries
• Library of Congress
• Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library
• Missouri Botanical Garden Library
• National Library Board (Singapore)
• Natural History Museum, LA County
• Natural History Museum, London
• e New York Botanical Garden
• Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
• Smithsonian Libraries
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• United States Geological Survey Libraries
• Washington University of St. Louis
4. Growing organization
• Vision : Inspiring discovery through free
access to biodiversity knowledge.
• Mission :The Biodiversity Heritage Library
works collaboratively to make biodiversity
literature openly available to the world as part
of a global biodiversity community.
5. Growing organization: Goals
1. Relevant Content : Build and maintain the BHL as the largest reliable,
reputable, and responsive repository of biodiversity literature and archival
materials.
2. Tools and Services : Develop services and tools which facilitate
discovery and improve research efficiency of BHL content.
3. User Engagement : Increase global awareness about the BHL through
outreach, learning and education, and branding through engagement and
collaboration with existing and new user communities.
4. Membership and Partnerships : Grow BHL consortia membership
and partnerships while fostering cross-institutional collaboration that
continues to serve as a model for digital library development.
5. Financial Sustainability : Ensure sustainability and relevance by being
flexible, adaptable, and financially sound while the content and services
remain openly and freely available.
6. Growing consortium
• 4 New “Gardeners”
– Washington University Library (St. Louis, MO)
– National Library Board Singapore
– Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History
Research Library
– University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
University Library
7. Growing consortium
• BHL Central “Tract”
– 16 institutions in the United States
– 2 institutions in the United Kingdom
– 1 institution in Singapore
– Verses global “plots” elsewhere in Africa,Australia,
Brazil, China, Egypt, Europe
8. New Membership Structure
Members
• $10K annual dues
• Guide BHL decision making
• Funding for digitization
• Access to specialized software
and technical support
• Opportunities to participate in
technical development
• Collaborative fund-raising
opportunities
• Possible travel support
• Achieving economy of scale
for access to, and storage of,
digital collections in a safe
repository
Affiliates
• No annual dues
• Participation in an active,
award-winning collaborative
program that is making
biodiversity literature freely
available to the world
• Opportunity to provide advice
about the growth and
development of the BHL
Program
• Discounts on service fees for
content ingest, access and
technical assistance
10. BHL, BHL…
How does your garden grow?
• Digi$za$on
:
BHL
consor+um
libraries
send
books
to
the
Internet
Archive
for
scanning
• Aggrega$on
:
Harves+ng
non-‐BHL
consor+um
materials
from
Internet
Archive
corpus
based
on
criteria
of
subject
headings
and
call
numbers
• Aggrega$on
Experiment
:
indexing
metadata
for
content
available
on
external
websites
=
3rd
party
links
18. Sowing for the future
• “Macaw” software for loading content scanned
outside our standard workflow
• Full Text Search!
• Innovative projects:
– Purposeful Gaming
– Art of Life
– Biodiversity Library Exhibitions
– Digging into Data
– Field notebooks
20. • Open access
• Open data
• Deliver content where users are already
working
– Via other biodiversity websites & taxonomic
resources
– Via social media
• Involve users in collection &
technical development
…not just another silo