Unlocking the Index Animalium: From Paper Slips to Bytes and Bits

Smithsonian Institution Libraries Suzanne C. Pilsk

Joel M. Richard

Martin R. Kalfatovic

Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

African Art

African American History and Culture

Anthropology

American Art

American History

Asian and Middle Eastern Art

Aviation history and Space Flight

Design and Decorative Arts

Environmental Management and Ecology

History of Science and Technology

Latino History and Culture

Materials Research

Modern and Contemporary Art

Museology

Native American History and Culture

Natural History

Postal History

Tropical Biology

Trade Literature

World’s Fair Ephemera

Libraries and Librarians

Metadata

How to make THIS into 1’s and 0’s

Digitization

Metadata Fail

The Squire

Metadata Successes

Connecting Index to Sources

Bibliography = Metadata

Lost… Just Lost

Steps to Improve

Vision of Global Natural History Library

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

Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition

Taxonomic Literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types (second edition)

15 volumes guide to the literature of systematic botany published between

1753 and 1940

Organized by author ~ Citation for the author’s surname

Numbered entries of the author’s publications ~ Suggested short-title & abbreviation of short-title for use in taxonomic publications

TL2 is a standard by which author’s names and titles should be abbreviated

★ Linked Open Data – 5 Stars ★

★ Available on the web (whatever format), but with an open licence

★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)

★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)

★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff

★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context

• Shareable

• Extensible

• Re-Usable

• International

http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/

Future

Thanks To Many

• Joel Richard

• Martin Kalfatovic

• Grace Costantino

• Courtney Shaw

• Keri Thompson

• Interns too numerous to name

• Volunteers too numerous to name

• Gilbert Borrego

• Carolyn Sheffield

• Bianca Crowley

• Becky Morin

• Mike Lichtenburg

• David Remsen

• Patrick Leary

• Chris Freeland

And The Birthday Boy: Charles Davies Sherborn

Contact information: PilskS@si.edu

Interesting Sources Index Animalium http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/indexanimalium/

Taxonomic Literature New Version

www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2

Connecting Content

research.calacademy.org/library/fieldnotes

The Field Book Project

www.mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/index.html

Linked Open Data

linkeddata.org/

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

www.sil.si.edu/

Smithsonian Institution

www.si.edu/

Biodiversity Heritage Library

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

Internet Archive

www.archive.org/