The chapter gives an overview of the origin and growth of The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and the vision for the BHL to move from a traditional "digital library" to a 21st century repository of all heritage biodiversity literature recast and refactored as actionable data.
The 2019 BHL Annual Meeting (Ithaca, NY) was where the idea that BHL is more than just "books" and exists as data first came about. It's hinted at in my presentation as Program Director, "Seeing a Butterfly & Knowing What It Is: BHL: Past > Present > Future" and was fleshed out in the coming years. I'll cover that in more detail in future posts.
- Citation: Kalfatovic, Martin R., "Data Born in Literature: The Biodiversity Heritage Library – A Global Digital Library Serving the Planet," in Yang, L., & Salaz, A. (Eds.). (2025). Digital Libraries Across Continents (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003473589.
More about Digital Libraries Across Continents:
Digital Libraries Across Continents illustrates how digital librarianship practitioners and scholars digitize, exhibit, and preserve their cultural heritage, and how these practices may be influenced by the policy, economic, and sociocultural environments in which they are developed.
Including scholarly articles, case studies, examples of best practice, and conceptual essays solicited from different continents, this book provides an overview of the status quo of digital libraries around the globe. The case studies examine how macro-level policy, funding, and social priorities influence the development of digital libraries. The volume offers a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between libraries in different countries and the ways in which they view, foster, develop, and sustain digital librarianship. Chapters within the book examine systems, standards, workflows, content, protocol, social and policy environments, culture, metadata, and more, through a series of case studies provided by practitioners working in these settings. Taking a comparative international approach, the book promotes the development of inclusive, accessible, and sustainable digital libraries that serve a global human knowledge endeavor.
Digital Libraries Across Continents provides a wide-ranging examination of issues in cross-border digital library contexts. It will be essential reading for library practitioners, as well as information scientists and educators.