Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Digital Libraries for Science: Botanicus & Biodiversity Heritage Library Chris Freeland Director of Bioinformatics, Missouri Botanical Garden Technical Director, BHL

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Why scan old books? The cited half-life of publications in taxonomy is longer than in any other scientific discipline * * * The decay rate is longer than in any scientific discipline - Macro-economic case for open access, Tom Moritz

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Botanicus.org

Workflow SelectionPreparation Post Production(Re)publication Digitization Conservation

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Selection process Botanische Jahrbucher fur Systematik… 15,052 Revisio Generum Plantarum 13,548 Linnaea 12,695 Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 11,757 Flora Brasiliensis 9,833 Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany 7,599 Repertorium Specierum Novarum Regni Vegetabilis 7,578 Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 5,853 Species Plantarum 5,736 Das Pflanzenreich 5,455 …… Title Protologues

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Digitization process 6 Full time scanning technicians 3 Indus 5002 book scanners 1 Kodak i280 Sheet feed scanner

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Demonstration: Connecting a name with its protologue

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008

Citation resolver Vol.Title PartPageYear

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008

How we make the connections From Tropicos: –Store structured citation info, not free text Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Start Page: 358 *NOT*: 2(4): 358 –Maintain authority files for bibliographic materials, including Botanicus TitleIDs From Botanicus: –Detailed info for every page –Knowledge of other identifiers for book –Flexibility to accommodate multiple cataloging

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Botanicus Progress To Date: 2,400 volumes 1 million pages …growing daily… Freely available at

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 BHL Institutions Museums –American Museum of Natural History (New York) –Natural History Museum (London) –Smithsonian Institution (Washington) –The Field Museum (Chicago) Botanical Gardens –Missouri Botanical Garden –New York Botanical Garden –Royal Botanic Garden, Kew Bioinformatics Institutes –MBL/WHOI –uBio.org University Libraries –Botany Libraries, Harvard University –Ernst Meyer Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University –University of Illinois

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Scanning Operations BHL uses scanning centers established by Internet Archive for mass scanning.Internet Archive Some partner libraries also scan in- house. Want to expand international footprint: mirrored content ingest from global data providers Locations of BHL/IA Scanning Centers

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 BHL Progress To Date: Nearing: 24,000 volumes 10 million pages …growing daily… Freely available at

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Open Access Literature Flora de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Flora de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Publisher: Buenos Aires :M. Biedma è Hijo,1905. PDF OCR XML JP2

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Name Finding via TaxonFinderTaxonFinder

Raw ImageConverted to text via OCR Name finding via TaxonFinderExtract namesSubmit to NameBank SOAP response Name Finding in action with Taxonomic Intelligence…

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 BHL Name Finding Stats to date * Have mined more than 30 million name string occurrences –4.4 million unique More than 23.7 million name strings verified by NameBank –1.2 million unique *17 November 2008

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 BHL & JSTOR Complementary efforts –Preservation & distribution of scholarly content Yet distinct –BHL has thousands of monographs –Rare materials –Content selected specifically for taxonomists & parataxonomists –All BHL content is open access

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 How can BHL enrich LAPI? Links to: Protologues All occurrences of a name Historic texts Illustrations & maps

Freeland, LAPI II, 18 NOV 2008 Contact Chris Freeland 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO