Meeting: 2014 BHL Technical Meeting (2-3 April 2014, St. Louis)

The 2014 Spring CNI meeting was being held in St. Louis and it seemed like a good opportunity to save on travel expenses and add on a BHL. 

We scheduled the BHL meeting for 2-3 April, right after CNI. BHL gathered the staff involved in technical development at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was a useful meeting to cover key topics during the ongoing technical transition of BHL.

We stayed, as was often the case, at Trelease House, the apartment building the Missouri Botanical Garden provides for academic and research visitors. On the night of April 3, I woke up at 05:30 to my phone making emergency alert sound. 

Tornado warning in area with one spotted nearby (near the Ritz Carlton where CNI was in fact). Get up and out to main room. My suitemates were unaware of alert, so I got everyone up and we all go to shelter just as sirens go off outside and loudspeakers shout "take shelter immediately". Can't get to basement from front of building, so we go under stairs. I get messages from other BHL staff in other rooms that they're all sheltering. 

Group photo with World's Fair Donuts

Later that day, when we go to dinner in a downtown restaurant, there is another tornado warning and we all have to head to the basement of the restaurant for about 20 minutes.

 

Doug Holland (right) giving a tour of the Rare Book Collection (with Kia Siang Hock from the National Library Board, Singapore)

When there wasn't a threat of tornados, the Missouri Botanical Garden was looking great as springtime was underway.

Views of the Missouri Botanical Garden

Publication: "Geocoding LCSH in the Biodiversity Heritage Library". Code4Lib Journal Issue 2 (March 24, 2008)

One of the first publications on BHL was initiated by Chris Freeland (BHL Technical Director) and the tech team at the Missouri Botanical Garden (MOBOT) and published in the then still pretty new online journal, Code4Lib Journal. I also contributed enough for author credit.

The map, created using the methodology outlined in the article, was a feature of the BHL website for a number of years. 

Figure 3: Google Map with geocoded LCSH from the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Abstract: Reusing metadata generated through years of cataloging practice is a natural and pragmatic way of leveraging an institution’s investment in describing its resources. Using Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the Biodiversity Heritage Library generates new interfaces for browsing and navigating books in a digital library. LCSH are grouped into tag clouds and plotted on interactive maps using methods available within the Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API). Code examples are included, and issues related to these interfaces and the underlying LCSH data are examined.

"Geocoding LCSH in the Biodiversity Heritage Library," with Chris Freeland, Jay Paige, Martin R. Kalfatovic, and Marc Crozier. Code4Lib Journal Issue 2 (March 24, 2008). URL.

Meeting: 2010 BHL Institutional Council Meeting (21-22 March 2010, New York City)

The 2010 BHL Institutional Council meeting was held in New York City at the American Museum of Natural History, 21-22 March 2010, hosted by AMNH Library Director, Tom Baione.

This was one of the most intense of the leadership meetings from the early days. The meeting itself was only one day, 22 March. People arrived on the 21st and there were some informal meetings over dinner that outlined some governance workings that were formalized at the meeting the next day.

The key move was to delay the scheduled Executive Committee election by temporarily suspending the BHL Bylaws (my knowledge of Roberts Rules of Order helped me figure out the proper way to do this. Doug Holland formalized the process by moving that the election be suspended and the current Executive Committee remain in place while a new bylaws task force convene. This had the benefit of avoiding a certain, and embarrassing, election loss by a key BHL partner and keeping a strong team in place (Cathy Norton, Connie Rinaldo, Doug Holland).  

We also had a presentation on fund raising from the AMNH development team. There were grand plans for a cooperative fund raising effort, but that eventually died due to opposition from individual institutional fund raising priorities.

I also helped to organize how we could count partner "in kind" contributions, a tool that lasted for many years. Martin: put together Member Contribution document. He wants to know if it makes sense and asks that we send suggestions about how and what to report.

There were good reports from Bianca (Lipscomb) Crowley on collections and issue tracking, and scanning operations at partners. Chris Freeland gave a technical update, including usage of the BHL site. BHL Program Director Tom Garnett gave a full financial report. At this point, BHL was in Year 3 of the MacArthur grant with two years left to go. As Tom noted, "BHL needs to get years 4 and 5 right!"

In an update on global BHL activities, Graham Higley (NHM London and Encyclopedia of Life) reported on BHL Europe and other projects. It was proposed a group be formed to monitor/expand those efforts. Nancy Gwinn (Smithsonian), proposed the group be called the BHL Global Coordinating Committee which ended up sticking. Chris Freeland was keen to ensure that BHL come up with a way to ingest content from a variety of providers around the world.

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: 2008 BHL Architecture Meeting (19-21 March 2008, Cambridge, MA) & 2008 BHL Institutional Council meeting

In March 2008, BHL staff gathered in Cambridge, MA at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Harvard) for an important meeting around BHL's technical architecture.

Attendees included:

• Freeland, Chris (BHL/MOBOT)
• Garnett, Tom (BHL)
• Higley, Graham (NHM)
• Leary, Patrick (EOL/MBL)
• Lichtenberg, Mike (MOBOT)
• Mignault, John (NYBG)
• Morris, Paul (Harvard)
• Norton, Cathy (MBLWHOI)
• Payette, Sandy (Fedora Commons)
• Rinaldo, Connie (Harvard)
• Scholz, Henning (Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
• Schopf, Jennifer (EOL)
• Thomson, Neil (NHM)
• Warnement, Judy (Harvard Botany) 
• Wendler, Robin (Harvard)

Key agenda items were discussions around the use of Fedora as a repository for BHL content. Chris Freeland provided an overview of the BHL applications, staff from the Encyclopedia of Life discussed possible integrations, and development desiderata were explored.

The planning work on BHL Europe as well as other international partners and their impact on BHL technology were covered.

The out of town group all stayed at the Sheraton Commander in Cambridge. The "She-Raton" was a regular haunt for BHL meetings in Cambridge. One of my favorite photos is below, capturing participants walking from the Commander to the Museum of Comparative Zoology. I call it, "March of the Bioinformaticians".

March of the Bioinformaticians

Following the Architecture Meeting, there was a meeting of the BHL Institutional Council on 21 March, also held at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge Massachusetts, led by the BHL Executive Committee, Graham Higley (Chair), Cathy Norton (Vice-Chair), and Connie Rinaldo (Secretary).

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.

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