Meeting: Catalogue of Life Global Team Meeting (19-21 March 2019, Champaign, IL, Illinois Natural History Survey)

BHL had worked with the Catalogue of Life (CoL) for a number of years and I had attended CoL meetings in various locals in the past.

This meeting was held in Champaign, IL, at the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS). The INHS is the home base for the Global Names Architecture (GNA) team (since they moved from Woods Hole a while back). It was great to see Dmitry (Dima) Mozzherin and Geoffrey Ower. 

The meeting also gave me a chance to catch up with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) BHL team of Kelli Trei and Susan Braxton. 

From Left: Peter, Dima, Olaf:

Ed DeWalt (INHS) was the host of the meeting that included other key players including Peter Schalk (CoL/Naturalis), Tom Orrell (ITIS/Smithsonian), Yury Roskov (Species 2000), Markus Doering (GBIF), Leen Vandepitte (WoRMS), David Remsen (Marine Biological Lab), Olaf Bánki (CoL), Chuck Miller (Missouri Botanical Garden), and others.

It was also great to walk around the UIUC campus which I visited a number of times for both BHL and other digital library work.

I gave the following presentation on BHL to the group.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2019, March 21). BHL &The Catalogue of Life. Catalogue of Life Global Team Meeting, Champaign, IL (Illinois Natural History Survey). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19037959

Meeting: 2024 GBIF Midterm Meeting (18-19 March 2024, Copenhagen)

As a member of the second chair of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Budget Committee (and member of the United States GBIF Delegation) I was invited to the annual GBIF Midterm meetings in Copenhagen. The past years, during my Budget Committee membership, the Budget Committee portion of the meeting had been virtual (for practical reasons or due to COVID-19).

I'd been to Copenhagen previously for GBIF travel, so I knew my way around a bit.

This would be my last GBIF meeting as BHL Program Director (and employee of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives), but I didn't know that at the time! I have continued my participation and engagement with GBIF as I moved to the IIIF Consortium.