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Good Morning!

A dangerous idea … circa 370 BCE

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

The Universal Library or the Library of Babel?

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 ...

• 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

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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

seemue edk aerbgelgninbe n d aboaarlsdpd ele felr

"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."

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

"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."

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)

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)

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

available?

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

Who lives/lived here?

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

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

Specimen collections

Databases

Publications

Observations

‘Gray’ literature

Index cards

Field notebooks

Taxonomic Impediment

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

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

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

2006 BHL is created

10 US and UK partners

Technology Library Science

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Problems of Mass Digitization of Library Materials

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

Reclassification of “Sperm Whale” over time

Problems of Taxonomic Science

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

Secretariat and Technical Staff August 2011 Program Director

Program Manager

Collections Coordinator

Technical Director Programmer Data Analyst

Global BHL Steering Committee August 2011 Vice Chair

Secretary

Chair

Biodiversity Heritage Library Global Governance

Major External Sources of Funding

• 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

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)

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

43,157,045 pages 134,453 items 74,412 titles

8 April 2014

Content Growth 2007-2014

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%

233 countries Users in 245 Countries

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xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-

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<Status>ok</Status>

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<ItemID>16800</ItemID>

<Volume/>

<Contributor>MBLWHOI Library</Contributor>

<Sponsor>MBLWHOI Library</Sponsor>

<Language>English</Language>

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87,594 mobile visits (32% iPad) March 2013 – March 2014

35,231 mobile visits (45% iPad) March 2012 – March 2013

36,928 visits from social media to BHL in 2013

13,400 visits from BHL’s own blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts

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

Field Notes and Archival Materials

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

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

“Thank you much for your help. It is so useful as I am right now working on the fishes of Ganges. Moreover it is so great that the library provides classic literature on fishes and it was a dream to me [when] I started my taxonomy ten years back. It is marvellous [what] you did for us which are badly in need of old literature. Thanks a lot.”“Thank you much for your help. It is so useful as I am right now working on the fishes of Ganges. Moreover it is so great that the library provides classic literature on fishes and it was a dream to me [when] I started my taxonomy ten years back. It is marvellous [what] you did for us which are badly in need of old literature. Thanks a lot.”

What an absolutely wonderful site. It is a treasure trove of information. Thank you!


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.


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.

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

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

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 ...,

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

Community / Partnership / Science / Content

Thank you! Danke!

Guten Morgen! -...

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