Celebration: Official Launch of the BHL Portal, 9 May 2007

May 2007 was an important time for BHL. All the work done by Tom Garnett to integrate BHL into the funding streams for the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) was coming together. 9 May was selected as the official launch date for EOL and the event would take place in Washington, DC.

The day started with a press conference held at the National Press Club. After that, participants regrouped back at the Smithsonian's Natural History museum to (well, you know), do more work. A bunch of us hung out in the digitization space (where the Smithsonian's Scribe machine had been delivered a few days earlier, on 5 May 2007). We'd decorated the room with some print on demand books from the Internet Archive and a Mold-a-Rama dinosaur from The Field Museum.

Cathy Norton and Brewster Kahle between events at the Smithsonian's Scribe digitization room

National Academies of Sciences

Installations: The Internet Archive Scribe machine arrives at the Smithsonian

To ramp up digitization of content, BHL partnered with the Internet Archive. In addition to using the large scale digitization centers the Internet Archive had set up in other parts of the country (Boston, San Francisco, New York), the Smithsonian partnered with the Library of Congress to set up a digitization center on Capitol Hill. To supplement the mass digitization center, the Smithsonian also hosted a single Scribe machine in the natural history building that that would focus on rare and fragile materials. 

On Saturday, 5 May 2007, the Scribe machine was delivered to the Smithsonian. Along with Tom Garnett, we were there to meet the delivery truck and help the movers transport the Scribe into the building. 

The Natural History museum is across the street from the Department of Justice and the Attorney General's office. A large, unmarked truck arriving on a weekend and turning around in the middle of Constitution Avenue drew the attention of law enforcement. We were able to explain what was going on and allowed to proceed with the unloading.

The Scribe, operated by Internet Archive and Smithsonian staff would go on to digitize hundreds of thousands of pages of biodiversity literature for BHL until it was removed in 2025.