GlobalBHLOutcomes

Global BHL Project Outcomes

Outcome 1: The Biodiversity Heritage Library will develop strategic institutional partnerships in order to establish replicated, synchronized repositories for a seamless Global BHL.

Output 1.1: Working with all BHL partners and affiliated institutions, develop organizational and project protocols, procedures, and agreements to ensure continued open access to the global, synchronized corpus of biodiversity literature.

Activity 1.1.1: Develop policies on replication, mirroring, and inter-operability

· Have developed and started a system for large asynchronous data transfer
o Replication from Internet Archive content into the Cluster at MBL in Woods Hole is currently running, adding new content on a weekly basis (Thursdays) as it is made available in the biodiversity collection.
o Replication from the Cluster with BHL-Europe has started after initial synchronization tests (/a/ directory) proved successful and the initial data load sent with disks to the National History Museum was received and installed.
o Initial data load to BHL-China was delivered and is being copied into their servers by the Chinese Academy of Science
o Initial data load sent with disks to Bibliotheca Alexandrina has been delivered and copied, awaiting installation. Initial exchange has begun to support them in defining replication protocols from IA to their servers
· Participating in DuraSpace DuraCloud pilot project using cloud storage providers for data transfer
o http://www.slideshare.net/chrisfreeland/bhl-in-the-cloud-a-pilot-project-with-duracloud

Activity 1.1.2: Establish clear communication lines with regional/national funding bodies where appropriate, e.g. NSF, EU eContentPlus, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Atlas of Living Australia, etc.

· Participated in BHL-Europe’s eContentPlus review, met with EU European Commissioners regarding the ongoing success of the BHL-Europe project.
· Have established relationships with program directors at NSF
· Submitted a proposal to IMLS with BHL member California Academy of Sciences as lead organization and other BHL members as subawards.
· Met with officials from Chinese Academy of Sciences in January 2010 and a reciprocal visit to BHL in MOBOT is planned for November 2011.
· Held an official signing party with the Atlas of Living Australia and Museum Victoria to establish the BHL-Australia in Canberra, Australia
· BHL received funding from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation to organize the Life and Literature Conference to be held in Chicago, November 14-15, 2011 to convene librarians, biologists, computer scientists, publishers, students, and other stakeholders to set the agenda for biodiversity literature digitizing and its networked environment for the next four to five years.
· BHL received funding from JRS Foundation to sponsor nine attendees from African institutions to participate in the Life and Literature Conference

Activity 1.1.3: Establish working agreements and content sharing protocols with commercial scientific publishing firms.

· Have established and ongoing development process to integrate BHL content into the JSTOR Plants portal.
· Contemporary publishers’ content like ZooKeys, PhytoKeys and Biorisk is indexed in BHL’s Citebank.

Activity 1.1.4: Integrate BHL content with other international biodiversity and digital library projects of large scope.

· Began an integration project to link BHL content from the International Plant Names Index.
· Began discussions with the Australian Plant Name Index cross-linking.
· Have defined protocols for data sharing with EDIT.
· Current BHL content will be shared through BHL-Europe with Europeana, a project funded by the European Commission and overseen by the Europeana Foundation.
· Testbed data has been provided to IMPACT (Improving Access to Text), a project funded by the European Commission that aims to significantly improve access to historical text and to take away the barriers that stand in the way of the mass digitisation of the European cultural heritage.
· Initial exchange was made with William Gunn from Mendeley to explore options for collaboration with BHL.
· To encourage additional usage of BHL data, BHL has publicized its APIs through the web site ProgrammableWeb: http://www.programmableweb.com/api/biodiversity-heritage-library.
· The Biblioteca Digital del Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid – CSIC (RJB), is now available via Citebank.

Output 1.2: Establish a global infrastructure for the storage, distribution, and dissemination of biodiversity literature using the Fedora Commons platform and in collaboration with DuraSpace Foundation.

Activity 1.2.1: Instantiate a BHL repository node in Europe based on Fedora Commons and other open source technologies.

· BHL-Europe node has been installed in London and is getting ready to have an initial launch in December 2011.
· An initial data load was transferred in three shipments and the synchronization protocol in place has passed the test pilot phase and is starting now in production with an initial set of a third of the data.

Activity 1.2.2: Instantiate a BHL repository node in Asia based on Fedora Commons and other open source technologies.

· BHL-China has been scanning using procedures and equipment from Internet Archive.
· An initial data load from BHL was transferred in two shipments and the last one is currently being copied into their servers.
· Initial work with BHL-China staff is planned for November to assist them in establishing the required synchronization protocols.
· Assisted IB-CAS in obtaining materials for collection development, demonstrating how BHL partner network applies to traditional library interactions as well as new ones enabled by technology. Fenghong: "I also would like here to thank BHL-USA friends [...] for your kind help with this [...] I feel so warm and honored to be a member of the global family of BHL."

Activity 1.2.3: Instantiate a BHL repository node in Australia based on Fedora Commons and other open source technologies.

· The Australian BHL node was launched to the public with the Atlas of Living Australia in July 2011.
· BHL Australia is analyzing and resolving technical and usability issues such as sharing content, indexing, performance and styling to start scanning Australian-published literature and rare literature held in Australian libraries.
· Initial work with BHL-Australia staff isis currently underway to establish the synchronization protocols of data and metadata.

Activity 1.2.4: Instantiate a BHL repository node in South America based on Fedora Commons and other open source technologies.

· Discussions were held during the Global BHL Technology Meeting in Woods Hole in September 2010 with Brazilian SciELO staff.
· BHL-SciELO was launch in Brasil on December 2010.
· BHL scanning protocols, tools and best practices were shared with Brazilian SciELO staff after new scanning equipment was received for two libraries and the SciELO node.

Activity 1.2.5: Instantiate a BHL repository node in Africa based on Fedora Commons and other open source technologies.

· Have had preliminary discussions with the Royal Museum for Central Africa on the best plan for establishing a node and partnerships within Africa
· Thanks to funding from JRS Foundation, nine attendees from African institutions are sponsored to participate in the “JRS African Biodiversity Literature Digitization Workshop” on November 16th. This Workshop aims to bring together African librarians, biologists, computer scientists, publishers and students to discuss and decide on African needs and objectives for Biodiversity Literature Digitization.

Output 1.3: Ensure that legacy biodiversity literature is formatted according to industry best practices through ongoing communication and collaboration with the Public Library of Science and international standards bodies like Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Foundation.

Activity 1.3.1: Review existing publishing schemas used for biodiversity literature and determine whether new elements are required to accommodate taxonomic works.

· Participated in a series of workshops held by PLoS to help define content and priorities for Biodiversity Hubs. Have offered BHL content as open access materials for inclusion and distribution.

Activity 1.3.2: Assist standards bodies in demonstrating how standards-compliant data can be interchanged among complementary repositories by refactoring BHL content into TDWG standards, as they develop.

· Chairing a session for TDWG 2010 in the “Literature & Publications track” to discuss role of electronic publications and upcoming decisions by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.
· Presented at the TDWG 2011 Symposium “Annotations: No longer just a slip of paper…” with the talk “Scribbles and Scraps: Darwin's Library and the Online Display of Annotated Biodiversity Literature”.
· Presented at the TDWG 2011 Symposium “Global biodiversity informatics initiatives update” with a talk entitled “BHL: Toward a Global, Sustainable Resource”