Hi All,
Just forwarding on the BHL Consortium highlights for the month of July! 🎉
Hoping everyone is having a fabulous summer at the various exciting conferences, events, and other Wiki celebrations!
All the best,
JJ
________________________________
From: BHL-STAFF <BHL-STAFF(a)SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU> on behalf of Colleen Funkhouser <0000035f8c42e8cb-dmarc-request(a)SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, August 6, 2024 3:48 PM
To: ListServ bhl-staff <BHL-STAFF(a)SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU>
Subject: July 2024 BHL Monthly Highlights
[Trouble viewing this message? Please see attached PDF or visit https://confluence.si.edu/display/BHL/Monthly+Highlights]
July 2024 BHL Monthly Highlights
Save the Date for 2025 BHL Annual Meeting! We are so pleased to announce that BHL Member Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) Berlin will be hosting our annual meeting in Berlin from April 7-11, 2025. Stay tuned for additional details later this year.
BHL welcomed Jane Quigley as the new BHL Member Representative for the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives (SLA). Jane is the Head Librarian at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Library. SLA Director Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty is currently on extended leave. Liza Kirwin, Deputy Director Emerita of the Archives of America Art, has been named Acting Director.
Presentations
On 9 July, Nicole Kearney and Jack Eastaugh presented “Capturing the history of Victoria’s Field Naturalists<https://www.vala.org.au/vala2024-proceedings/vala2024-session-03-kearney>” at the VALA Libraries, Technology and the Future 2024 conference in Melbourne, Australia.
On 22 July, Martin Kalfatovic organized Botanical Contributions from the Biodiversity Heritage Library<https://ibcmadrid2024.com/index.php?seccion=scientificArea&subSeccion=detai…> at the XX International Botanical Congress in Madrid, Spain. Speakers included:
* Martin Kalfatovic - Data for botany: unlocking the world of plants in BHL
* Nicole Kearney - BHL Australia: unlocking the foundation of Australia’s botanical knowledge
* Carmen Ulloa - Amplifying the contribution of women to botany: an analysis of plant genera that were named after women
* David Iggulden - Right on Kew: BHL at the Royal Botanic Gardens
* Abdeldjalil Aissi - Quercus faginea Lam. s.l. in North Africa, an ongoing taxonomic challenge
* Michael Trizna - Matching herbarium specimens with Mary Vaux Walcott watercolor paintings using machine learning and detective work
Did you give a presentation in July and don’t see it highlighted here? Let us know about your BHL-related papers, posters and presentations by filling in the Presentations form, available on confluence here: https://confluence.si.edu/display/BHL/BHL+Presentations
USER FEEDBACK
Overall
* 71 new tickets added to our Gemini Issue Tracking system
* 60% of these tickets, or 43, were added by BHL Staff
* 73 tickets were closed -- thank you for resolving outstanding Gemini tickets as you can.
* 3,687 tickets remain open in our system
COLLECTIONS HIGHLIGHTS
Top Contributors in July by Page Count
1. Boston Public Library 14,032
2. Smithsonian Libraries and Archives 13,887
3. South African National Biodiversity Institute 11,720
4. Cornell University Library 11,107
5. Internet Archive 4,880
82,972 Total Pages contributed to BHL in July
↑ from 68,917 pages in the previous month and > our new monthly average of 81,216 pages
The BHL Collections Committee
* Continued to make progress on retrospectively adding Rights Holder (RH) names to the BHL database. The addition of these names helps provide appropriate credit to the rights holders that have granted permission to BHL to include in-copyright items in its collection. The committee anticipates completing this task next month.
* Began collecting questions and concerns about the potential prospect of BHL as a publishing platform via a padlet to help structure its discussions going forward. The purpose of this discussion is to provide BHL Secretariat and EC with information to inform BHL’s strategic direction in the future.
* Reviewed final tweaks to virtual items display for BHL user interface. As most BHL article metadata lacks abstract information, the committee decided that abstract indexing – for the Pensoft articles that have abstracts – is a nice-to-have wishlist item.
* The new BHL Permissions workspace, PERM, now contains 225 titles, with 108 titles that are either unclaimed or a request for help has been submitted to a BHL partner. 92 titles of this total are e-content uploads in the UPLD workspace. Please review these PERM titles with priority, thank you!
CATALOGING AND METADATA COMMITTEE HIGHLIGHTS
* Audit unused MARC data in the import database
The Cataloging Committee began reviewing unharvested MARC fields for metadata relevant to BHL. Fields under consideration for ingest include 016<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/0xx/016.html>, 222<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/2xx/222.html>, 247<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/2xx/247.html>, 760<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/7xx/760.html>, 762<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/7xx/762.html>, 800<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/8xx/800.html> , 810<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/8xx/810.html>, and 811<https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/8xx/811.html>. The Committee intends to make final decisions during next month’s meeting.
* OCLC error report - metadata clean up
The Committee reviewed OCLC error reports in an effort to identify and rectify data integrity issues, which will help ensure the clean delivery of high quality MARCXML to ShareVDE. The Committee flagged cleanup tasks that could be completed by BHL partners, while errors associated with non-partner institutions were marked “won’t fix.”
* ChatGPT for creating MARCXML records from meta.xml
There are many items in IA that lack MARC records and thus have not been harvested by BHL. The Committee has begun strategizing possible solutions, which include using ChatGPT to create MARCXML records from meta.xml. The plan is to develop a Research Spike that will consider prompts for archival materials, quality assurance, ethical implications, and more.
* GEMINI tickets
The Committee reviewed and closed several Gemini tickets related to typos and title merges, including a ticket created in 2010!
PERSISTENT IDENTIFIER WORKING GROUP (PIWG) HIGHLIGHTS
Total new BHL DOIs for July: 3,076
Total new BHL segments for July: 3,288
In July, the PIWG uploaded content and article metadata for:
* Journal of the New York Botanical Garden<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/44898> (1,376 articles; title is now approximately 50% complete)
* Mycotaxon<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/210747> (1,138 articles, all with external DOIs)
* Journal of South African Botany<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/135556> (203 articles, via AI)
* Doriana<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/211183> (151 articles, via AI)
* Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/part/11384> (10 articles added, others cleaned)
* Arnoldia<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/124580> - checked 1483 articles; 539 articles edited, 113 articles added; 1501 new DOIs added
* Index Rafinesquianus<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/211085> (1949) - scanned and DOI assigned to title
* Opuscula Philolichenum<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/210741> Uploaded 22 volumes (2004-2023). Added 260 articles. Assigned 252 DOIs
* Yuccas of the southwestern United States<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/211021> (1938-1947). Scanned 2 volumes and assigned DOI.
TECHNICAL TEAM HIGHLIGHTS
* Modified the sort order used to display segments in the "See Also" section of the part landing page
* Added support for External Resources to Segments
* Improved navigation delivery for Virtual items on the front-end
* Added prominent links to the BHL Feedback Form on the BHL Website, About site, and Blog site
* Now routing Scan Requests from BHL User Feedback to the SCAN project in Gemini
* Rewrote virtual items code to use crossref API for more structured and robust metadata retrieval
* Began development of a citation “widget” to be added to the title, segment, and book viewer landing pages
* BHL Tech had a mid-year Cycle Review 2024 to discuss past performance and future technical priorities remaining
BHL-WIKI WORKING GROUP HIGHLIGHTS
* A BHL-WIKI GitHub project board<https://github.com/JJDear83/BHL-WIKI-Working-Group/projects?query=is%3Aopen> has been set up for the group to track work, milestones, metrics and scholarly outputs related to the group charge. If you would like access to this board, please send your GitHub handle to JJ and look for an automated email granting access to your email. For more information about GitHub projects please consult the documentation.<https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with-projects> We will go over github project management tools at the August meeting.
* A Request for Interest message was disseminated regarding the BHL Wikimedian-in-Residence position with an amazing turnout of qualified candidates. Interviews, informational sessions, and final evaluation are being overseen by Wikiblueprint<https://www.wikiblueprint.com/>
* In anticipation of further curation work to happen on BHL images, the group continues to work through the Flickypedia documentation.<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q-GRyE0GeCLDx_CSaMJbOLg7N068QalZgo-pZg-…>
* The group is working to finalize a hypothesis statements for WMG annual planning<https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xbNc_RFzOz7Dm6avVlBb4h39iqZCk-nLXjV…> Please come to the August monthly meeting to inform this important conversation.
* Giovanna Fontenelle has submitted a conference abstract for WikiConference North America 2024 entitled How to create Wikimedia Working Groups for GLAMs<https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions:2024/How_to_create_Wikimedia_Wo…>
* Siobhan Leachman is attending and will be presenting on biodiversity wiki activities at the following events:
* International Botanical Congress (IBC) 2024 (21-27 July 2024, Madrid, Spain)<https://ibcmadrid2024.com/>
* Wikimania 2024 the 19th Wikimedia conference, (7–10 August 2024., Katowice, Poland)<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katowicehttps:/meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikima….>
OUTREACH HIGHLIGHTS
For an overview of all BHL Outreach resources, visit https://confluence.si.edu/display/BHL/Outreach. For all public BHL promotional materials, visit https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/about/press-room/.
User Praise
* "I have seen so much content that must be from @BioDivLibrary at #IBC2024, but BHL is rarely acknowledged as the source. But perhaps this just means that BHL integrates seamlessly & invisibly into the interlinked network of scholarly research online. #JobDone" (via @nicolekearney on Twitter)
↪️”BHL is to biodiversity as plumbing is to modern comforts.. things are worse without it. Same applies for taxonomy and the rest of biology.” (via @gjolleyrogers on Twitter)
* "@BioDivLibrary is one of the coolest resources ever! If you have checked it out, you should." (via @jbwallingford on Twitter)
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Dear BHL Community,
Please share this announcement with your network. BHL has begun the solicitation process for a Wikimedian-in-Residence<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedian_in_residence> which was the top-voted recommendation from the BHL Wikimedia White paper entitled Unifying Biodiversity Knowledge to Support Life on a Sustainable Planet.<https://bhl.pubpub.org/>
Many thanks,
JJ
________________________________
Original announcement https://www.wikiblueprint.com/blog/bhlwir
Are you interested in building a global biodiversity knowledge graph to generate actionable insights for life on a sustainable planet? Do you know your way around Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons? Do you like working with biodiversity data and properties?
The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is seeking contractor services to support our Biodiversity Heritage Library with a Wikimedian-in-Residence project. The contractor will provide advanced data modeling expertise and share their knowledge via trainings and engagement with the broader biodiversity wiki community. This contract will last for a period of 4-6 months, beginning in October 2024. The contractor will work remotely.
We are conducting market research to identify qualified individuals who are interested in this contract opportunity. We’re looking for people with:
*
Advanced Wikidata data modeling expertise
*
Experience with community building for Wikimedia initiatives
*
Comfort working remotely with distributed teams and open knowledge projects
*
Ability to find consensus around properties and Wikidata proposals
*
Excellent oral and written communication skills
Do you have some or all of these skills? We want to know! We will be sending out a Request for Quotes (RFQ) to qualified potential contractors, once identified. Please indicate your interest and send a current resume to info(a)wikiblueprint.com<http://Please%20indicate%20your%20interest%20and%20send%20a%20current%20res…>. Resumes received by August 2nd, 2024 will receive first consideration.
Thank you!
-Jake Orlowitz
Lead, WikiBlueprint
Hello Wiki Collaborators!
In case some of you have not heard this news, I wanted to forward an important update that BHL's Program Director, Martin Kalfatovic has taken the new position as IIIF's Managing Director<https://iiif.io/news/2024/04/23/new-md/>. Martin departed from his position at the Smithsonian after 37 years of service and he will be greatly missed by the BHL community. Please see his farewell message, forwarded below.
I wanted to send my heartfelt thanks to everyone on this email thread for your ongoing collaboration and support of BHL, especially during this transitional time. In the interim, the BHL Secretariat<https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/about/staff/#Secretariat> and Executive Committee<https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/about/staff/#BHL%20Governance%20Staff> will oversee day-to-day operations for the Consortium.
warmly,
JJ
JJ Dearborn
Data Manager, Biodiversity Heritage Library |
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
[https://woodpecker.co/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/dbHg18raJkJAbxhrT08asw/f3b640e4…]
dearbornjj(a)si.edu<mailto:dearbornjj@si.edu>
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1000 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
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biodiversitylibrary.org<https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/>
[https://woodpecker.co/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/dbHg18raJkJAbxhrT08asw/5dba2852…]<https://twitter.com/BHLDataMgr> [https://woodpecker.co/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/dbHg18raJkJAbxhrT08asw/8cf9f4cc…] <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjdearborn/> [https://woodpecker.co/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/dbHg18raJkJAbxhrT08asw/2e8253e9…] <https://www.youtube.com/c/biodivlibrary>
[cid:535e4469-4828-4624-9d0a-8d7b1cb4cfec]
________________________________
From: BHL-Partners <BHL-PARTNERS(a)SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU> on behalf of Kalfatovic, Martin <000000d4efea7d32-dmarc-request(a)SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2024 2:24 PM
To: ListServ bhl-partners <BHL-PARTNERS(a)SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU>
Subject: So long and all the best
Dear BHL Colleagues:
I want to thank you all again for your work on BHL over the years. As I mentioned on the BHL Staff call last week, I began my professional career at the Smithsonian and succumbed to the temptation to feel that such a large institution, so rich (relatively speaking) in resources, would be able to easily contain multitudes.
In 2004/2005 when I began work on two science projects (the Biological Centrali Americana<https://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/bca/explore.cfm> and the US Exploring Expedition<https://library.si.edu/digital-library/collection/united-states-exploring-e…> -- both now mostly in BHL!). The publications from both these naturalist projects were scattered around the world and no one institution or library could create a full digital version alone.
Working with the core group of BHL partners, Tom Garnett (at the Smithsonian), Chris Freeland and Doug Holland (Missouri Botanical Garden), Graham Higley (Natural History Museum, London), Tom Moritz (AMNH), and, of course Cathy Norton (MBLWHOI Library), Constance Rinaldo (MCZ/Harvard), and Nancy Gwinn (Smithsonian), created the initial partnership of 10 (soon 12) institutions and the BHL was formed.
As Darwin, et al., noted, “The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library”. In the past nearly 20 years, BHL has become that “extensive library”. It is this idea of a global collaboration in service to science, to biodiversity, to sustainability on our only planet, that has been the motivating force in my time with BHL. And also for many of you.
Though I’ll remain active in the biodiversity community, I’ll close with a quote from a different domain, literature. William Faulkner’s Nobel prize speech often comes to my mind when I think of the fragility of our world:
“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” -- William Faulkner’s speech<https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1949/faulkner/speech/> at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950
Faulkner was addressing a clear existential threat at that time, global nuclear war. As we now know, the seeds of two more quiet crises, those of climate change and biodiversity loss, were already long planted. BHL is a key resource in finding solutions to these crises and as many have said, “if BHL didn’t exist, it would have to be built again.”
It’s because of all of you, and the others no longer with BHL that I believe that BHL will, as Faulkner noted, not only endure, but also prevail.
All the best,
Martin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Martin R. Kalfatovic (he/him/his)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinkalfatovic/ | VIAF ID: 32094717 (Personal) | ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4563-4627 (Personal)
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Hi everyone,
As most of you might already know, there is an ongoing research about
GLAM-Wiki: the GLAM CSI (Contributor Study Initiative) project
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_CSI>, accomplished by Andrew Lih and
the Smithsonian.
I'm sending this email as a reminder to fill out its *survey*
<https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/985159?lang=en>. We would love
to hear from you and your experience as a GLAM staff, a Wikimedian in
Residence, or an affiliated staff working with GLAM-Wiki!
With this survey, we want to understand the pain points and the overall
experience of contributing to the GLAM-Wiki ecosystem. We want to document
and understand the experiences of joining and contributing at all levels,
from all regions of the world, and from small to large institutions.
This survey should take around 15-20 minutes to complete and all
contributors, whether with low, medium, or advanced knowledge of GLAM-Wiki
are encouraged to take part.
A description of the survey can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_CSI#Survey>.
Best,
Giovanna
Giovanna Fontenelle (she/her)
Program Officer, Culture and Heritage
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
Hello everyone,
A few weeks ago, we announced the WikiLearn course on how to upload and
edit files on Wikimedia Commons using OpenRefine.
- In English: OpenRefine for Wikimedia Commons: the basics
<https://learn.wiki/courses/course-v1:Wikimedia-Foundation+WMF_GLAM001+2023/…>
- In Spanish / Español*: OpenRefine para Wikimedia Commons: conceptos
básicos
<https://learn.wiki/courses/course-v1:Wikimedia-Foundation+WMF_GLAM001+2024_…>
- In French / Français*: OpenRefine pour Wikimedia Commons : les bases
<https://learn.wiki/courses/course-v1:Wikimedia-Foundation+WMF_GLAM001+2024_…>
We are now happy to announce the translation for Italian!
- In Italian / Italiano: Introduzione all'uso di OpenRefine per
Wikimedia Commons
<https://learn.wiki/courses/course-v1:Wikimedia-Foundation+WMF_GLAM001+2024_…>
This course can be easily translated into other languages (more about
the translation process here
<https://studio.learn.wiki/meta_translations/discover_courses/> and here
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tutorial_on_how_to_translate_course…>).
More translations are on the way, including Portuguese, which will be
launched soon.
All the versions of this course are available at any time for free. You
only need a Wikimedia account and the course can be followed at your own
pace, with computer-graded exercises. A certificate is awarded at the end
and an average of 6 to 8 hours is needed to complete the course.
Please, feel free to share these translations with people who speak these
languages and who you think might be interested in learning more
about OpenRefine or Wikimedia Commons.
Thank you so much, Marta Erica Arosio, for your amazing work translating
this course into Italian! 👏👏👏
Best,
Giovanna
* These two courses/languages had problems before and are now fixed and
fully available.
Giovanna Fontenelle (she/her)
Program Officer, Culture and Heritage
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>