The BHL way to content William Ulate BHL Technical Director Global BHL Coordinator Leiden, Netherlands February 14, 2013

What is BHL? The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.”

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Dear Sir / Madam Can i just congratulate you on an absolutely brilliant online resource. I am compiling a report on an invasive hydromedusae and could not believe the ease and efficiency of this web page which genuinely saved me weeks of my life Research that previously took months now takes only a few hours La plus grande #bibliotheque #botanique & #zoologique online The largest online botanical & zoological #library #BHL The freeing of knowledge may lead to new discoveries and changes in the way the natural world is perceived

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San Francisco Woods Hole London Alexandria Beijing Global Replication & Serving Replicated Data Center Portal Application

> 390,000 views in 10 months > 1200 sets > 60,000+ images

The Art of Life project: describing and providing access to natural history illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) TitleStictospiza formosa TypeIllustrations DatePublication: 1898 AgentAuthor: Arthur G. Butler ( ) Illustrator: F.W. Frohawk ( ) DescriptionA pair of finches with green and yellow bodies resting on reeds SubjectsScientific name: Amandava formosa (Latham, 1790) Vernacular Name: Green Avadavat or Green Munia Accepted Name: Amandava formosa (Latham, 1790) Birds, finches Inscriptionsbottom center: Green Amaduvade Waxbill (Stictospiza formosa) Source Butler, Arthur Gardiner. Foreign finches in captivity. Hull and London: Brumby and Clarke, limited,1889 (2nd edition). This image comes from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and is available online at biodiversitylibrary.org/page/ Biodiversity Heritage Librarybiodiversitylibrary.org/page/ RightsPublic domain ElementDefinitionExamplesRepea t Agentsperson or corporate entity involved in the creation, design, production, or publication of a visual resource. Curtis,John publisher Y CopyrightThe copyright status of the visual resource. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) nc/2.0/deed.en N DateDate or range of dates associated with the creation or publication of the visual resource Y DescriptionA free-text note about content of the image, including comments, description, or interpretation, that gives additional information not recorded in other categories. This illustration shows a scale, coloured illustration of Sepsis annulipes (now known as Encita annulipes) beside the Trifolium ochroleucum plant. Several dissections from Sepsis cylindrica Fab. (all these details are provided on the next page of this book and the subsequent page). Y InscriptionsAll marks, caption, or written words added to the object at the time of production or in its subsequent history, including signatures, dates, dedications, texts, and colophons, as well as marks, such as the stamps of silversmiths, publishers, or printers. bottom Radula of L. souleyetianum on a more reduced scale Y SourceA citation for the book, journal or resource that hosts the visual resource Butler, Arthur Gardiner. Foreign finches in captivity. HullBrumby and Clarke, limited,1889 (2nd edition). N SubjectTerms or phrases that describe, identify, or interpret the visual resource. Carl Linnaeus Plant: Picea abies Plant: Picea abies Plant: Norway spruce Y TitleThe title or identifying phrase given to an Image Sepsis annulipes Orangutan Y TypeIdentifies a general category for the visual resource maps forestry maps Y Example of illustration described using Art of Life schema Art of Life schema elements required in Red We welcome your feedback on the schema!

Where are we? Scientific Name Extraction – Improved algorithm (Thanks uBio!) Articles – Extended BHL data model to store article metadata – Content and Process to harvest data from BioStor in place Create user interfaces for adding article metadata and associated files – Functional requirements defined – Process flow for adding article metadata and associated files – Implement UI changes Change BHL UI to accommodate article search Change BHL UI to accommodate article display (TOC)

Scientific Name Extraction TaxonFinder algorithm in production since 2008 – More than 100 million candidate name strings – More than 1.5 million unique, verified names – Available through UI, APIs, Data Exports & Internet Archive New collaboration with Global Names – Improved algorithm, better precision & recall – More data with TaxonFinder and Neti Neti!

Taxon Names BEFORE Name Instances 101,591, ,288,804 Unique Names 7,498,554 7,464,924 Verified Names 1,905,507 1,902,803 EOL Names 63,130,350 62,963,582 EOL Pages 13,579,868 13,532,684 AFTER Name Instances 151,222, ,066,425 Unique Names 29,246,382 29,091,767 Verified Names 10,153,165 10,109,540 EOL Names 87,791,695 87,135,089 EOL Pages 15,466,713 15,342,867

Article-level metadata Chapter-level metadataTreatment-level metadata

Part-level metadata Disambiguating and locating structural components in the corpus Done by automated and crowdsourced means – Thanks Rod Page! Welcome others! Greatly increases semantic value of the dataset Addressing important – makes data addressable and thus linkable

Articles in the BHL UI

Images

PDF Generator

Support citation reconciliation L. Sp. Pl. 2: Linneaus, C. Species Plantarum, vol. 2 p Linné, Carl von. Sp. Pl. Vol. 2 Page Caroli Linnaei, Species Plantarum exhibentes plantas rite cognitas, ad genera relatas, cum Differentis Specificis, Nominibus Trivialibus, Synonymis Selectis, Locis Natalibus, secundum SYSTEMA SEXUALE digestas.. 2: Zea mays

Citations Providers

What we’d like to do Improve OCR Rekeying Tables of Contents Researching candidate Scientific Names Image identification & extraction – – Currently funded by NEH ^Challenges framed as games

2007 Name Finding Study >35% OCR error rate for names only 1Insert Space8n->v 2Omit Space9l->i 3e->c10r->i 4u->I11u->ii 5u->n12h->l 6i->l13h->ii 7c->e14e->o Top OCR errors 35.16% Of the 3,003 names, 1,056 were incorrectly transcribed by OCR. Wei, et al. An Evaluation of Taxonomic Name Recognition (TNR) in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Proceedings of TDWG

Abbild ungen und Beschreibungen der Fische Syriens, nebst einer neuen Classification und Characteristik sämmtlicher Gattungen der i JOH. JAKOB HECKEL, Inipectoi am k. k. Hof-Natur.-iUenkabinete in Wien, mehr, yelelirt. UeHtllMeii. MIfglivd. STUTTGART. E. Schweizerbart' sehe Verlagshandlung, 1843.

Older material Great deal of material is pre-1923 Irregular fonts – blackletter Multiple languages on same page – English text with Latin scientific names Changes in geographic names Changes in scientific names

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Expanding scope Manuscripts, field notebooks –mostly handwritten, often with drawings Global expansion means dealing with non- Western script systems and a whole new set of OCR problems – Arabic materials from Bibliotheca Alexandria in Egypt

Images

OCR Improvements Gaming Transcription

OCR Improvements Transcription Purposeful Gaming Crowdsource Markup

Transcribe Bentham A collaboration of the University of London Computer Centre, UCL Library Services and UCL Learning and Media Services with consultation from the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities Volunteer users can log-in and transcribe previously unstudied and unpublished manuscripts from the Bentham Papers collection in UCL Library's Special Collections in the Transcription Desk.UCL Library's Special Collections Transcription Desk Since launch, volunteers from around the world have transcribed several thousand Bentham manuscripts to an extremely high standard. Results and findings:

Transcribe Bentham Who were the volunteers?

Transcribe Bentham Age ranges

Purposeful Gaming SpaceClimateHumanitiesNatureBiology

Purposeful Gaming DIGITALKOOT Joint project run by the National Library of Finland and Microtask to index the library's enormous archives so that they are searchable on the Internet for easier access to the Finnish cultural heritage.National Library of FinlandMicrotask Launched on Feb , nearly participants completed over 8 million word fixing tasks by Nov DigiTalkoot enabled volunteers to participate in this fixing work by playing games.

OCR Improvements German text interpreted by the OCR process as: “unb auf ben ©elnrgen be6 fublic{)en”

OCR Improvements Different resulting texts from parsing the phrase: “und auf den Gebirgen des südlichen Deutschlands” (“and on the mountains of southern Germany”) IA OCROCR 2 Transcription 1 Transcription 2 1 unbund Ok 2 denbenden Ok 3 ©elnrgen©ebirgenBebirgenGebirgenX 4 be6desde5desChk 5 fublic{)enfublichenFüdlichenSüdlichenX 6 £)eittfc{)(anb6DeutfchlanbsDeutfchlandsDeutschlandsX

Purposeful Gaming

Crowdsource Markup Display textSpecies Profile Model category General/summaryTaxonBiology Geographic rangeDistribution Habitat Food sources and feeding behaviorTrophicStrategy Physical description (general)Description Physical description (detailed morphology)DiagnosticDescription

Thank you William Ulate Global BHL Project Manager / Technical Director Missouri Botanical Garden Skype: william_ulate_r