Meeting: 2009 Architecture Meeting (9-10 March 2009, Woods Hole)

Group Photo from 9-10 March 2009 BHL Architecture Meeting (Woods Hole)

In March 2009, BHL held an architecture meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woods Hole is home to many major scientific organizations including the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), NOAA Fisheries Woods Hole Laboratory , and the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England. The early years of BHL saw many meetings in the Woods Hole facilities.

Tom Garnett (BHL Program Director), Bianca Crowley (BHL Collections Manager), and Chris Freeland (BHL Technical Director from the Missouri Botanical Garden, MOBOT) led the meeting. Chris was joined by other tech staff from MOBOT, including Mike Lichtenberg (who went on to be the key developer of BHL), Phil Cryer, Chris Meyers. Other staff attending from across BHL were:

• Natural History Museum, London (Adrian Smales, Bernard Scaife)
• Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard (Connie Rinaldo, Joe deVeer)
• The New York Botanical Garden (John Mignault), 
• Smithsonian Libraries (Suzanne Pilsk, Martin Kalfatovic), 
• MBLWHOI Library (John Furfey, Ahmed Hamed, Maggie Rioux, Diane Rielinger, Anthony Goddard)
• Encyclopedia of Life/MBL (David Patterson, Patrick Leary)
• BHL Europe/Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin (Henning Scholz)

The combined library of WHOI and MBL, the MBLWHOI Library, was a founding member of BHL and an important node for bioinformatics. The MBLWHOI Library was led by Cathy Norton (also in attendance) who was the BHL Executive Committee Vice-Chair.

The meeting was also significant in that this was perhaps the first BHL meeting attended by a representative of the recently formed BHL Europe (Henning Scholtz).

Other key topics included:

• BHL Article Repository (later to become CiteBank). Presentation by Phil Cryer
• The "Orange Bag" problem (named after an orange bag sent to Chris Freeland with content to upload to BHL) -- original photo here
• A presentation by Chris Freeland on the "BHL Flipbook"
• The team from EOL/MBL also gave a presentation on taxonomic name finding, something that would become a cornerstone of BHL's success

Papers and Laptops

Swope Academic Housing

Tom Garnett, Henning Scholtz, John Furfey

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

Meeting: 2008 WebWise (5-7 March 2008, Miami Beach) the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Rijsttafel

The 2008 WebWise (5-7 March 2008) in Miami Beach was an important one for BHL. From the Smithsonian, I attended along with Suzanne Pilsk. Doug Holland from the Missouri Botanical Garden was there. The star of the event, however, was Cathy Norton from the MBLWHOI Library. Cathy, a prime mover of BHL was also the Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee and played a role in the informatics component of the Encyclopedia of Life.

In addition to a number of Smithsonian colleagues, Maura Marx and Beth Prindle (from Boston Public Library and who had recently launched the Adams Family Papers project) and Rachel Frick (IMLS Senior Program Officer) were there. All three ended up being long time supporters of BHL in various positions throughout the year. 

E.O. Wilson, the noted entomologist at Harvard, “wished” for an authoritative encyclopedia of life that would be freely available on the worldwide Web for the entire world. On May 9th, 2007, The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) was launched as a multi-institutional initiative whose mission is to create 1.8 million Web sites detailing all the known attributes, history, and behavior, about every known and described species and portraying that information through video, audio, and literature, via the Internet. A major contributor to the Encyclopedia is the Biodiversity Heritage Library that is currently scanning all the core biodiversity literature. -- "The Encyclopedia of Life, Biodiversity Heritage Library, Biodiversity Informatics and Beyond Web 2.0 (abstract)" by Cathy Norton. As published in First Monday.  Volume 13 Number 8 - 4 August 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v13i8.2226

Doug Holland and Suzanne Pilsk

The conference reception was held at the Wolfsonian Museum which was a highlight of the trip. Another highlight was dinner at Indomania, a great Indonesian restaurant on South Beach where we had a Rijsttafel ("elaborate Indonesian meal adapted by the Dutch from the hidang presentation of nasi padang from the Padang region of West Sumatra" -- Wikipedia) dinner.

Resources

• WebWise 2.0: The Power of Community. Schedule and Related Materials 

About IMLS and WebWise (from the 2011 Site)

The following is a description of the WebWise conference and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), circa 2011.

WebWise 2011

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and in particular their Digital Media and Learning program provided support for this year's conference. Click here to learn more about WebWise, IMLS digital resources and how we bring together representatives of museums, libraries, archives, systems science, education, and other fields to explore the many opportunities made possible by digital technologies.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. To learn more about the Institute, please visit www.imls.gov.

Meeting: 2004 WebWise (3-5 March 2004, Chicago), some BHL Prehistory

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) was a key financial supporter for a number of BHL projects. The WebWise conferences, annually hosted by IMLS from 2000-2013 were important venues for meetings of BHL participants. 

2004’s “WebWise 2004: Sharing Digital Resources”, held 3-5 March 2004 in Chicago, was of particular importance for the after-hours session where ideas about what a digital biodiversity library might look like. 

Along with Doug Holland (Missouri Botanical Garden, later Secretary of the BHL Executive Committee), Chris Freeland (Missouri Botanical Garden), Suzanne Pilsk (Smithsonian), and I did a classic napkin sketch of a digital library for biodiversity in the lounge of the Hotel Intercontinental, Chicago.

At right, table and couch in the Intercontinental Hotel, Chicago, where, at Webwise 2004, BHL was partly born (picture from 2009). 

At a recent visit to Chicago in 2024, I stopped by the lounge, but it has been renovated out of existence.

Some Resources

• First Monday. Volume 9, Number 5 - 3 May 2004. Archived Papers

About IMLS and WebWise (from the 2011 Site)

The following is a description of the WebWise conference and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), circa 2004..

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute's mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. To learn more about the Institute, please visit www.imls.gov.

My iNaturalist Year in Review: 7,304 observations | 1,164 species | 114 identifications

A very busy year with iNaturalist. Of course many of those observations (1,575!) were Spotted Lanternflies (Lycorma delicatula). My species count was also helped by visiting New Zealand, Colombia, and San Francisco.

You can see the full 2025 report here.

Publication: "Data Born in Literature: The Biodiversity Heritage Library – A Global Digital Library Serving the Planet" (2025)

Last year, Digital Libraries Across Continents, Edited by Le Yang and Alicia Salaz was published by the Taylor & Francis Group. Included in the collection was my chapter,  "Data Born in Literature: The Biodiversity Heritage Library – A Global Digital Library Serving the Planet." 

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.