Building a large digital libraryand interacting with the World

the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Founded in 2006

Matthew Person MBLWHOI Library, Biodiversity Heritage Library, ASU/MBL HPS Program

pagination box

Behind every stack of books is a flood of knowledge Artist: Jacek Yerka

Biodiversity Heritage LibraryLibrary and Laboratory: the Marriage of Research, Data and Taxonomic LiteratureLondon, February 2005Eighty participants from 22 countries gathered to discuss the status and future of access to the taxonomic literature and to propose an agenda for actions that would improve the research environment for taxonomy. The participants were biologists; librarians; conservation workers; publishers; representatives of learned and professional societies, private foundations and government agencies; and specialists in information technology.Progne subis- Purple Martin

Illustrations of the nest and eggs of birds of Ohio, 1879-1886

GEMINIcrowd sourced issue resolution

Early on in this project we realized that the sheer volume of what we were doing was opening up the probability that somewhere during the scanning workflow errors would occur which required correcting. Everything from fingers in a scan image to pages which had not been scanned, and gaps of all sorts. Even a comprehensive quality control project did not mean that all of these errors would be caught. Gemini is an open source issue resolution tool.

…additionally, through this Gemini tool

BHL librarian Grace Costantino has said:

“Harnessing the energy of our users and allowing them to do the prioritization work for us …(through clicking on a feedback button)… has been a key element to our success. By responding individually to each user regarding their feedback, we also make them feel involved and invested in our project… Scanning based on user requests ensures that our limited funds are spent on titles most useful to our user community.”

There are other ways our “full service” digital library harnesses the power of the library consumers to:

•grow•fill in gaps•correct errors•assist in research•harness social media for the above

“It is also difficult to determine what results you would get after the event and what even qualifies as a good result versus a poor one. How many images and article edits makes it all worth the time it takes to plan a hold an event such as these? Who’s to say? The quality of the data is also something to think about. Do citizen scientists provide the same quality of data as trained scientists? Again, hard to quantify.” –BHL librarian Gilbert Borrego

Staff weekly create two regular types of posts on the BHL Facebook page. The firstis daily quizzes, which pose questions about biodiversity for users to answer.The second is biodiversity news updates, which are posts highlightingnews stories relevant to the biodiversity realm. Whenever possible, staff linkall posts back to BHL content.

Facebook Statistics Q1, 2012:People Interacting with Page: 1,789Interactions: 2,438New Page Likes: 449Total Page Likes: 2,111Page Unlikes: 30Engaged Users: 4,948Reach of Posts: 77,114

Shark

week!

Summary of Shark Week Results:

Facebook:We saw a 46% increase in traffic to our website originating from Facebook during the Shark Week campaign as compared with the previous two months’ average traffic from Facebook.

Twitter:We saw a 125% increase in traffic to our website originating from Twitter during the Shark Week campaign as compared with the previous two months’ average traffic from Twitter. Flickr:We saw a 50% increase in traffic to our website originating from Flickr during the Shark Week campaign as compared with the previous two months’ average traffic from Flickr.

We are also work to increase our presence as a scientific and cultural resource on Wikipedia through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant called the Art of LIfe Project: which is developing Schema for sharing BHL image metadata.

We are also studying Wiki Source, which is a tool that would allow uploading of and crowd sourcing of OCR text correction. We have also built bibliographies of titles which have become collections on iTunes University

None of this is flippant; it all revolves around the collections we have scanned into the BHL, estimated to be about 33% of the total pre-1923 texts and 7% total core biodiversity taxonomic literature.

BHL and Purposeful Gaming

Pagination

Image tagging

Source: Baker, Samuel White, Sir. Wild beasts and their ways London,Macmillan and co.,1890.

Source: Holland, W.J. The butterfly book; a popular guide to a knowledge of the butterflies of North America. Garden City, NY Doubleday, Page & Company, 1922

Thanks to the Diane Rielinger, MBLWHOI Library co-Director; Biodiversity Heritage Library Staff; MBLWHOI Library Staff; and the ASU-MBL History and Philosophy of Science Program