Meeting: 2018 BHL Annual Meeting (12-16 March 2018, Los Angeles) and BHL Program Director's Report

 

The 2018 BHL Annual Meeting was held in Los Angeles, 12-15 March, 2018. The meeting was split over two locations, The Natural History Museum (hosted by Richard Hulser), Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden (hosted by Susan Eubank).

The meeting also so a lot of membership changes with the addition of new members, members moving between levels, creation of the Reciprocal Partnership category.

In many ways this was peak BHL in terms of membership and participation. In 2019, there was a subtle shift in BHL priorities as a focus on data began to surface and new thinking about the value proposition of BHL in a biodiversity commons was formulated.

One of the highlights of the meeting was the "BHL Day" event which featured a talks by two Postdoctoral Fellows at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits, Dr. Alexis Mychajiliw and Dr. Libby Ellwood, as the featured speakers. Grace Costantino (BHL) opened with a talk about BHL and its users, Empowering Global Research followed by Drs. Ellwood (Passenger Pigeons in the Western United States) and Mychajiliw (Eyewitness to Extinction). 

Earlier that day, the group was given a special tour behind the scenes at the Tar Pits. Being in Southern California inspired me to look back to the speech by Walt Disney on the opening of Disneyland in 1955.

• Kalfatovic, M. (2018, March 14). 2018 BHL Program Director's Report: Secretariat & Technical Update. 2018 BHL Annual Meeting, Los Angeles. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18828793

To all who come to this happy

place: Welcome. BHL is your

land. Here age relives fond

memories of the past, and here

youth may savor the challenge

and promise of the future. BHL

is dedicated to the ideals, the

dreams, and the hard facts that

have created the World, with

the hope that it will be a

source of joy and inspiration

to all. -- Walt Disney (not), July 17, 1955

Some side excursions included a visit to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. In off hours, some of us paid a visit to The Last Bookstore and the Santa Monica Pier.

Arriving at the Natural History Museum
(from left: Costantino, Sheffield, Rinaldo, Freeland, Crowley, Lynch)

Ellwood and Mychajiliw

Group Photo

Meeting: 2011 WebWise (10-11 March 2011, Baltimore, MD)

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, and WebWise 2004 (Chicago) of particular importance for the after-hours session that saw a draft of BHL planned on a napkin.

WebWise 2011 was in nearby (for me), Baltimore, 10-11 March 2011. As per usual, it was an excellent program. There were a number of BHL partner staff in attendance. Featured on a panel was Rebecca Morin, from the California Academy of Sciences (CAS)

The Biodiversity Heritage Library, the world's largest repository of full-text digitized legacy biodiversity literature, has added more than 14,000 records of digitized materials brought together from 12 prestigious institutions to WorldCat. Rebecca A. Morin, User Services Librarian at the California Academy of Sciences will discuss this exciting project as well as a recent IMLS National Leadership grant that CAS has received to develop a system for integrating biological researchers' field and specimen notes, with museum specimens and related electronically published literature. The enhanced and integrated access to biological data will serve a wide variety of users, and will connect to other ongoing projects such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library. -- Rebecca Morin | BHL Partner: California Academy of Sciences (CAS)

Danielle Castronovo (also from The California Academy of Sciences), presents on the project in the open session.

Representatives from a number of BHL partners were also presenting updates on previously funded IMLS projects. This included Connie Rinaldo (MCZ, Harvard) and Judy Warnement (Harvard Botany). Doug Holland and Chris Freeland also presented updates on funded projects.

Resources

• WebWise 2011 Webcasts

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: 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: 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.