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This talk focused on two projects being carried out by the Missouri Botanical Garden related to the Biodiversity Heritage Library - Art of Life and Engelmann Correspondence. The Art of Life, funded by NEH, is a project to identify and describe the rich natural history illustrations hidden within the pages of BHL literature. The Engelmann Correspondence project, funded by IMLS, is a project to digitize and make available in BHL letters sent to 19th century botanist, George Engelmann by his colleagues in the US and Europe. Both projects are providing new content types to the BHL portal http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/, helping contextualize its published literature, and expanding BHL audiences.
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Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Trish Rose-SandlerData Project Coordinator, Center for Biodiversity Informatics Missouri Botanical Garden
Daron DierkesProject Manager, Engelmann Correspondence projectMissouri Botanical Garden
Revealing and Contextualizing the treasures of the Biodiversity Heritage Library –
the Art of Life and Engelmann projects
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
What is BHL?
• A consortium of natural history, botanical libraries and research institutions
• An open access digital repository for historic biodiversity literature
• An open data repository of taxonomic names and bibliographic information
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Member Institutions• Academy of Natural Sciences Library and Archives• American Museum of Natural History Library • California Academy of Sciences Library• Cornell University Library • The Field Museum Library• Harvard University Botany Libraries • Harvard University, Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology • Library of Congress • Marine Biological Laboratory / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library• Missouri Botanical Garden Library• Natural History Museum, London, Library & Archives• The New York Botanical Garden • Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Library & Archives• Smithsonian Institution Libraries • United States Geological Survey Libraries
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
BHL Global
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Why the need for Art of Life?
Problem statement • How to provide better access to
images?• How to broaden the audiences for
BHL content?
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
What is Art of Life?
• Full title - The Art of Life: Data Mining and Crowdsourcing the Identification and Description of Natural History Illustrations from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)
• Grant given to Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis• Funded by National Endowment for the Humanities• Runs May 2012-April 2014
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
5 Primary Objectives of Art of Life
Objective 1: Define an appropriate metadata schema for natural history illustrations
Objective 2: Build software tools to automatically identify illustrations in the BHL corpus
Objective 3: Enhance existing tools to enable the initial sorting, viewing, and editing of these identified visual resources.
Objective 4: Integrate tagging applications to enable a community of users to edit descriptive metadata for the illustrations
Objective 5: Integrate the descriptive metadata generated by users back into BHL portal both for access and preservation
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Current status of Art of Life• Development of the algorithm is complete and we are running
it across the entire BHL corpus• Draft schema for describing natural history illustrations
available for public review http://tinyurl.com/9hm7nsb• Classifier tool complete
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
How can this project benefit this community?
• Significant resource of natural history images that will be made openly accessible and reusable- resulting 1 million plus images and catalog metadata will be downloadable for free use and available in image platforms already familiar to you (e.g. ARTstor),
• Content is very cross-disciplinary: appeals to a wide range of audiences including artists, biologists, humanities scholars, particularly historians of science; librarians, education and outreach. Anyone who uses images in their research and teaching.
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
BHL corpus provides verifiable identification of the occurrence of life on Earth, and form a rich digital library of texts documenting the history of science. The materials in BHL range from the 15th to 21st centuries and cover all geographic areas of the globe.
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
The illustrations serve many purposes
Documenting life on Earth – with the current changes in global climate patterns and the rapid loss of natural habitat for many species, in some cases the historic illustrations contained within these texts represent the only available image documenting a species. For example, many of the rare orchids illustrated and described in early volumes of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine in continuous publication since the late 1700’s, were subsequently over-collected, and as such, the printed illustrations that are now digitized and made available through BHL are the only verifiable resource about those organisms and their existence on Earth.
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
The illustrations serve many purposes
Providing public views of exotic creatures & collections – Many of the rare folios digitized and made available within BHL contain illustrated works that were often peoples’ first views of strange creatures from foreign lands. Pioneering expeditions like the H.M.S. Challenger resulted in preliminary reports and final published works that documented more than 4,000 new marine species, including the first illustrations of many deep-sea fishes, like the raspback skate.
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
The illustrations serve many purposes
Representing the earliest discoveries and explorations of the “new world” – As discussed by Francesca Herndon-Consagra in her introduction to the exhibit, The Illustrated Garden, “by the mid-sixteenth century, European expeditions to foreign lands generated a flood of new information as explorers documented and collected specimens while abroad. Imports like vanilla, coffee, tea, and cocoa proved immensely lucrative, momentous to colonial land use, and revolutionary to European culture and medicine. These discoveries not only spurred the desire to produce illustrated botanical books, they also fostered patronage of further plant research”viii
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
Thanks to Art of Life team!PI
Trish Rose-Sandler, Missouri Botanical GardenAlgorithm development
Ed Bachta, Charlie Moad, Kyle Jaebker, Indianapolis Museum of ArtSchema development
Gaurav Vaidya and Robert Guralnick, University of Colorado, BoulderWilliam Ulate, Missouri Botanical Garden
ProgrammingMike Lichtenberg, Missouri Botanical Garden
Consultants Doug Holland, Missouri Botanical Garden; Chris Freeland, Washington University (former PI for Art of Life)
Digital History and Philosophy of Science meeting Sept 2013 Bloomington IN
For more info http://biodivlib.wikispaces.com/Art+of+Lifehttp://www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Contact: [email protected]
The George Engelmann
Correspondence Project
Digitizing Engelmann’s Legacy
Heuchera sanguinea Engelm. (Coral Bells)Friedrich Adolph Wislizenus, 1846
Collection Overview• 27+ boxes• Oversized Boxes• 550+
correspondents• 5,000+ letters• Transcriptions• Translations• Unprocessed Stuff• Old Finding Aid
5000 Letters + 8000 Specimens Context ???
Small LettersBig Data
Many Complications
Written: June 30, 1853Origin: Fort Smith, ArkansasMailed: July 2, 1853Destination: St. Louis, MissouriReceived: July 15, 1853Answered: February 17, 1855
Specimens also have locations,
dates, and other information.
Workflow
Marc RecordOCLC, MBG Catalog, Botanicus
Update Finding Aid
Scan to barcode.jpg and .tif
ActivateJPEG2000s to
Paginate
Send to
Finalize Web PresenceLanding page, finding aid,
BHL collection tags
Buchenau to GrayFebruary 6, 1868
Feb 06, 1868 [1]
Feb 06, 1868 [1] verso
Feb 06, 1868 [2]
Feb 06, 1868 [2] verso
Forwarded, Crossing the Gutter
Insert vs. ForwardDifferent?
Multiple Authors
John Torrey visits Asa GrayJuly 4, 1845
Boissier to Engelmann, June 28, 1860
Boissier’s Letter
Engelmann’s
Notes
Letter Transcription Translation
19th Century: collection assembled in a network
20th Century: collection stored in isolation
21st Century: collection accessed in a network
5000 Letters + 8000 Specimens Context ???
The Many Friends of Dr. George Engelmann
1820s – German Idealist, Agassiz and Braun
1830s – Immigrant, Meteorologist, Founder
1840s – Describes Plants of the Southwest
1850s – Missouri Botanical GardenAcademy of Science
1860s – War, Darwin, Viticulture
1870s – President of Academy
1880s – Adventurer
BHL Consortium Membership
Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia, PA)
American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco, CA)
Cornell University Library (Ithaca, NY)
The Field Museum (Chicago, IL)
Harvard University Botany Libraries (Cambridge, MA)
Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, MA)
Library of Congress (Washington, DC)
Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA)
Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO)
Natural History Museum (London, UK)
The New York Botanical Garden (New York, NY)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Richmond, UK)
Smithsonian Institution Libraries (Washington, DC)
United States Geological Survey (Reston, VA)
Open Platfor
mfor theRepublic of Letter
s
Parry to Torrey
Asa Gray (Harvard)
George Engelmann (MBG)
John Torrey (NYBG)
The Triumvirate
Wallace Correspondence Project
Darwin Correspondence Project
Three Collections and Two Projects
Different Method, Different Platform, Same Conversation
