Presentation: 2 presentations for the 2016 BHL Annual Meeting and 7th Global BHL Meeting (11-15 April 2016, London)

The 2016 BHL Annual meeting marked the 10th anniversary (by some counts) of BHL. I'll reflect more on that meeting in a future post, but for now, here are the two presentations that I did, one for the BHL Day event and the Program Director's Update.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2016, April 12). The Biodiversity Heritage Library: 10+1 and Beyond: Looking Forward. 2016 BHL Annual Meeting and 7th Global BHL Meeting, London, United Kingdom (Natural History Museum). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19545214.
• Kalfatovic, M. (2016, April 13). 2016 BHL Program Director's Report. 2016 BHL Annual Meeting and 7th Global BHL Meeting, London, United Kingdom (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19545342.

Meeting: Information Futures Institute (12 April 2008, Berkman Center, Harvard University)

Berkman Center

The Information Futures Institute (IFI) was (is?) an informal, recurring group, workshop, or collaborative initiative focused on the future of libraries, information science, and technology. I was introduced to the group by Cathy Norton (MBLWHOI Library) and Cathy invited me to a meeting of the group held at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

I got to meet a bunch of very interesting people at the session, including a number of Berkman people. Those attending included David Lankes (library thinker), Lewis Hyde (author of The Gift) and the brilliant, funny and always entertaining David Weinberger. David and I would go on to move in similar circles around projects like the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

Never heard about the group after my attending this meeting and not sure what became of it.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2008, April 12). "Oh Time, Thy Pyramids!" The Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Unchaining of the Universal Library(?)‏. Information Futures Institute Meeting (IFI), Cambridge, MA (Berkman Center, Harvard University). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19539675

Meeting: EOD - eBooks on Demand (10-11 April 2014, Innsbruk, Austria)

The Books2ebooks (EOD - eBooks on Demand) network held an international conference focused on the use and re-use of digital content on 11 April 2014 in Innsbruck, Austria. The project focused on digitizing and increasing the visibility of public domain library books from libraries across Europe.

The meeting opened with a reception on the evening of 10 April in the library spaces.

I was invited to the meeting as the keynote speaker and asked to talk about BHL.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2014, April 11). Building for Demand: The Growth of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. 2014 EOD - eBooks on Demand Network Meeting, Innsbruk, Austria. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19514954

I really liked giving this talk and was able to use a number of various themes I'd developed over the years, Plato, Borges, etc. and got to do it high in the Austrian Alps in the beautiful spaces of the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Tirol. 

Quote from Phadrus: “You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.” (Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. Fowler, 1925. 275a)

Meeting: I Annotate: Annoto Ergo Sum (10-12 April 2013, San Francisco)

I've attended a few of the I Annotate conferences, this, I Annotate: Annoto Ergo Sum (11-12 April 2013) was the first. Organized by Hypothes.is (and it's founder Dan Whaley), I Annotate always drew a crowd of the most interesting people. The meeting was held in the conference facilities of Fort Mason Center (San Francisco). One of the problems with Fort Mason is it looks right out over the Golden Gate, so can be distracting at times. 

Before the meeting, I took the opportunity for a visit to the California Academy of Sciences (a BHL partner) and met with the library staff. Also on this trip was Suzanne Pilsk (Smithsonian) and Chris Freeland (Missouri Botanical Garden). Cal Academy is a great place. I used to go there as a child (to the old dark and dusty building, so the new shiny museum with the eco-garden roof is always a surprise) and loved the coelacanth, the "living fossil," and a type of lobe-finned fish once thought extinct, that has, over the years, competed with the dodo for my attention.

Dan Whaley

A world of visitors

BHL

I Annotate Meeting

The first day kicked off with a series of talks. The keynote was by Caterina Fake (then of Findery, previously a founder of Flickr). Other talks included "Shared Canvas: Digital Facsimiles via Distributed Annotation" by Rob Sanderson (then at Los Alamos National Lab) who I crossed paths with for many years and is now a IIIF Editor.

For lunch, it was a taco truck parked out front (not sure if this was my first time of this very San Francisco treat).

JPB

On day two, the keynote way by John Perry Barlow (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and lyricist for the Grateful Dead. JPB and I crossed paths many times over the years. Usually in San Francisco, but the first time was at a meeting in Washington, DC in around 1996 or so where we both arrived late and ended up sitting next to each other in the back of the room (before he went up to give a keynote).

One of the talks on day two was “Rap Genius” by Jeremy Dean (Rap Genius). Rap Genius, a lyrics annotator, later morphed into just plain Genius and then over the years became so overrun with intrusive ads that its become almost unusable.

John Kunze (then of California Digital Library) gave a talk “Annotating Research Datasets” and “Enabling the distributed curation of the Astronomical literature through annotations” was given by Alberto Accomazzi (Smithsonian/NASA ADS).

Next up was yours truly doing the presentation:

• Kalfatovic, M. (2013, April 11). Building on Linnaeus: 260 Years of Taxonomic Annotation. I Annotate: Annoto Ergo Sum, San Francisco. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19503148

Because this was San Francisco, another of the attendees was Ted Nelson (of Project Xanadu fame) who just happened to be there. 

Ted Nelson

2022 WeDigBio Symposium: "The Critical Roles of Libraries in Understanding Earth's Biota" (8 April 2022 - Virtual)

WeDigBio is a project of the larger iDigBio project funded by the National Science Foundation. Both "DigBio" projects run regular events and trainings. In 2022, I participated in the virtual symposium, The Role of Libraries in Understanding Earth’s Biota where I gave a presentation on BHL.

The WeDigBio Symposium entitled “The Role of Libraries in Understanding Earth’s Biota.” This symposium will be from 3–5 pm ET, Friday, April 8, and it is scheduled to include talks by Darlene Cavalier (Professor of Practice, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University), Martin Kalfatovic (Associate Director, Smithsonian Libraries), and others with valuable perspectives. -- iDigBio Website

• Kalfatovic, M. (2022, April 8). Biodiversity Literature in Support of Citizen Science: An Introduction to the Biodiversity Heritage Library. WeDigBio Symposium: The Role of Libraries in Understanding the Earth's Biota, Virtual. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19477174

• A recording for the April WeDigBio 2022 symposium "The Critical Roles of Libraries in Understanding Earth's Biota" can be found at Vimeo. 

Two biodiversity/bioinformatics meetings in Belgium and the Netherlands (2-4 April 2015)

As Program Director for the Biodiversity Heritage Library, I participated in many meetings around bioinformatics. In April 2015, two important meetings were held in Oostende (Belgium) and Leiden (Netherlands).

The first of the two meetings took place in Oostende. The meeting was the Catalogue of Life Mini-Symposium held at the Vlaams Instituut Voor de Zee (VLIZ). In addition to staff from the Catalogue of Life, Donald Hobern (GBIF), David Remsen (Marine Biological Lab), and Tom Orrell (Smithsonian/ITIS) were attending. 

At the Symposium, I gave the following presentation:

Kalfatovic, M. (2015, April 2). Looking Forward: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Catalogue of Life Mini-Symposium (CoL), Oostende (Belgium). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19393206

The weather in Oostende was challenging, high winds and rain; we also had to take a short ferry ride to the meeting space. All the things that make biodiversity meetings special.

Following the meeting in Oostende, many of the group moved on to Leiden for a focused meeting on the work of BHL, EOL, ITIS, and GBIF. In addition to those at the CoL meeting, Bob Corrigan (EOL), Peter Schalk (CoL/GBIF) were in attendance. The meetings were held in the offices of Naturalis, then still in their temporary quarters in the Pesthuis before moving to their new building.

Group photos are always a great part of the meeting, here, we posed as Dutch Masters:

I was also able to take a bit of personal time and visited Amsterdam, Ghent, and the fabulous tulip gardens of Keukenhof.

Meeting: Boston Library Consortium (18 March 2008, Boston Public Library) and BHL Presentation

Boston Public Library: Free to All

Ahead of the 2008 BHL Architecture Meeting (18-19 March 2008) and BHL Director's Meeting (21 March 2008), Chris Freeland and I gave presentations at the Boston Library Consortium (BLC)Meeting held at Boston Public Library (BPL). 

The BLC meeting was hosted by Barbara G. Preece who served as the Executive Director of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) from 2000 to 2009. 

The meeting also included a tour of the Internet Archive scanning center at BPL and some other behind the scenes look at BPL operations including work being done on the Adams Family Papers.

Chris Freeland presenting

A rapt audience

From right: Cathy Norton, Barbara Preece,
Matt Person, Diane Rielinger

• Kalfatovic, M. (2008, March 18). A Global Library for Life: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Boston Library Consortium (March 2008 Meeting), Boston, MA (Boston Public Library). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19034559

Meeting: 2014 BHL Members' Meeting (10-11 March 2014, New York City) and BHL Program Director's Report

In my role as BHL Program Director, I regularly made presentations at the BHL Annual Meetings. This meeting took place in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Botanical Garden, 10-11 March 2014).

This meeting saw the reappointment of William Ulate as BHL Technical Director as well as a suspension of the bylaws to allow for further consideration of the election of the Executive Council.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2014, March 10). 2014 BHL Program Director's Report. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18819223

Group Photo: BHL Leadership (2014)

William Ulate

NYBG

Meeting: BHL Institutional Council meeting (8-9 March 2011, Washington, DC)

At this meeting (which took place 8-9 March 2011 in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Libraries), the governing body of the BHL was termed the BHL Institutional Council. The meeting brought together leaders from most of the BHL partners at the time. At left is the 2nd BHL, designed by staff at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The current logo was introduced on 1 September 2011.

BHL Institutional Council, March 2011

Washington, DC

In my role as BHL Deputy Program Director, I regularly made presentations at the BHL governance meeting. 2011 was important for BHL planning. The "Life and Literature" conference, to be held later in the fall, was being planned. Also, with the initial funding from the MacArthur Foundation running out, plans for what would come next for BHL structure and governance were a major topic (Hibernation, Status Quo, Development and Future Growth). 

• Kalfatovic, M. (2011, March 8). Taking Measure of the Biodiversity Heritage Library: 2003 - 2010. 2011 BHL Institutional Council Meeting, Washington, DC. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18819012

In this presentation, I played on the unofficial tag line, "Extensive.Open.Global" to outline a variety of metrics of success. The tagline was also featured in a video I made the previous September:

Some photos from the meeting:

Presentation: The Biodiversity Heritage Library (6 March 2013)

On 6 March 2013, I gave a presentation to the Advisory Board of Smithsonian Libraries on the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Keeping the Advisory Board informed and engaged was an important part of my role as BHL Program Director.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2013, March 6). The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Smithsonian Libraries Board Orientation, Washington, DC. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18818926