Accepted Poster Session: Zea Books: Digital Imprint of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries

Title: Zea Books: Digital Imprint of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries

Author: Sue Ann Gardner, Scholarly Communications Librarian, and Paul Royster, Scholarly Communications Coordinator, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract: Zea Books is the open-access digital works imprint founded by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries in 2010. Intended to complement, not compete with, the University of Nebraska Press, it gives a voice to scholars whose works would not meet the financial publication demands of a traditional press. Not limited to Nebraska authors, titles to date include De bestiis marinis, or, The Beasts of the Sea (Steller), the Dictionary of Invertebrate Zoology (Maggenti, Maggenti and Gardner), and A Nebraska Bird-Finding Guide (Johnsgard). Operations are overseen by the publisher, Paul Royster, and executive editor, Sue Ann Gardner. An adjunct board of advisers includes the Director of the University of Nebraska Press and UNL faculty.

Accepted Poster Session: EJT - A European Journal of Taxonomy

Title: EJT - A European Journal of Taxonomy

Authors: Bénichou, Laurence (1); Dessein, Steven (2); Gerard, Isabelle (3); Higley, Graham (4) & Martens, Koen (5)

Abstract: Thousands of scholarly papers in natural history are published each year, but many taxonomic papers are published in small journals and do not get a high visibility. An investigation among the partners of the European consortium EDIT taught us that within this digital era, many taxonomic journals are faced with complex strategic and technical questions: visibility, access, format, and funding, issues difficult to tackle by individual institutions.

A group of natural history institutions wanted to break from this trend and launched a collectively owned, online journal in taxonomy under the name EJT (www.europeanjournaloftaxonomy.eu). It takes there is a clear need for natural history institutions to act as public publishers/producers of taxonomic information. Taxonomy needs is a journal that offers a communication channel for descriptive taxonomic work in botany, zoology and palaeontology, using the latest online scholarly standards and services.

Our poster describes this journal offering a long term, public business model that is favourable to the unique scientific environment of natural history science, taking into account the long shelve life of taxonomic papers and the correct use of nomenclature rules. This model guarantees open access without cost to authors.

Affiliations:

1. Editorial Manager Scientific Publishing, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle; EDIT, CP 43, 57, rue Cuvier, 75231 Paris cedex 05; benichou@mnhn.fr 
2. Editor Plant Ecology and Evolution, National Botanic Garden of Belgium; Domein van Bouchout, B-1860 Meise, Belgium; steven.dessein@br.fgov.be
3. Head of Publications Service, Royal Museum for Central Africa; Leuvensesteenweg 13, 3080 Tervuren, Belgium; isabelle.gerard@africamuseum.be
4. Head of NHM Library & Information Services, Natural History Museum, London; Cromwell Road London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom; g.higley@nhm.ac.uk
5. Editor-in-Chief HYDROBIOLOGIA, and EJT Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences; Vautierstraat 29 1000 Brussels, Belgium; Koen.Martens@naturalsciences.be

Accepted Poster Session: The GRIB – A union catalogue of and scanning management tool for natural history libraries

Title: The GRIB – A union catalogue of and scanning management tool for natural history libraries

Authors: Boris Jacob* and Melita Birthälmer**

Abstract: The Global References Index to Biodiversity (GRIB) is a union catalogue of European natural history libraries. It contains deduplicated records from BHL-Europe and BHL partner libraries and also serves as a management tool to support the digitisation workflow in these libraries. For each of the bibliographic items the GRIB holds information on its digitisation status. This can  either be 1) not digitized yet, 2) nominated to be digitized by a Scientist, or 3) intended to be digitized by a librarian. If it is 4) already digitized and accessible in electronic form, then the GRIB links to the full text.

* Scientific Coordinator, Royal Museum for Central Africa / Tervuren
** BHL-Europe WP2 Leader, Museum für Naturkunde / Berlin, Germany

Accepted Poster Session: No specimen left behind: Industrial scale digitisation of natural history collections

Title: No specimen left behind: Industrial scale digitisation of natural history collections

Authors: Vince Smith* and Vladimir Blagoderov**

Abstract: Digitisation of biodiversity literature and of specimens is crucial to mobilising our accumulated biodiversity knowledge and a cornerstone of Biodiversity Informatics research. Collection digitisation projects usually deal with isolated parts of collections based on taxonomy or geography or other criteria. Specimen digitisation still lags far behind literature digitisation in terms of process rates and workflows. Detailed imaging and capturing of associated metadata of individual specimens is enormously time-consuming. Industrial approach is needed to advance digitisation of three-dimensional natural history collections which includes:

• determining significant parts of a collection with uniformly mounted specimens (e.g. drawers of insects, slides);
• imaging and annotating en masse
• software and hardware automation (conveyors, OCR, automatic ROI recognition); 
• assigning uIDs/DOIs
• web publication of collection images to allow crowdsourcing metadata enhancement. 

* Cybertaxonomist, Natural History Museum
** Manager of the Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Lab, Natural History Museum

Accepted Poster Session: The Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe

Title: The Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe 


Authors: Henning Scholz*, Graham Higley**, Jana Hoffmann***


Abstract: BHL-Europe is mobilising and preserving digital European biodiversity literature and facilitating the open access to this literature through a multilingual BHL-Europe portal, the Global Reference Index to Biodiversity (GRIB), and Europeana. The BHL-Europe portal will not only be multilingual but incorporate functionalities not currently available in BHL-Classic. It will, for example, facilitate the search for common and scientific names of biological organisms as well as person names through the implementation of webservices (e.g. Catalogue of Life, VIAF). In order to serve a broader audience, the literature available in BHL-Europe is also accessible by Europeana, Europe's digital library, archive and museum.


*Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin, Invalidenstraße 43, D-10115 Berlin

** The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London  SW7 5BD, UK

*** Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin, Invalidenstraße 43, D-10115 Berlin

Accepted Poster Session: Online synergy: Sherborn’s Index animalium and the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Title:  Online synergy: Sherborn’s Index animalium and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Authors: Grace Costantino and Leslie K. Overstreet, (both) Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Abstract:  The collection-based science of taxonomy provides internationally recognized names for biological taxa (primarily genera and species) and creates the necessary foundation for many applied sciences.  These names, whether currently accepted or in synonymy, have been published in the scientific literature since the mid-18th century, and finding their original appearance – to verify the taxon described, for example – can be almost as hard as finding a needle in a haystack.  In zoology, C.D. Sherborn’s Index animalium (1902-1933) solves this problem; it provides the original source for every genus name and species epithet in the zoological literature from the 10th edition of Linnaeus’s Systema naturae in 1758 (the official start-date of binomial nomenclature in zoology) to 1850.  The Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ online version of the Index animalium allows researchers to search the entire multi-volume work by name, epithet, or other keyword.  With the citation thus provided, researchers can then access the cited text itself, scanned in full, on the website of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).  BHL is an international consortium of natural-history institutions, supported by Internet Archive, dedicated to making the historical literature in the natural sciences freely available on the Internet.  To date, tens of thousands of titles have been mounted on the site, and the work continues.

Accepted Poster Session: Romantic Natural History: Literature and Science in the Century Before Darwin's Origin (1859)

Title: Romantic Natural History: Literature and Science in the Century Before Darwin's Origin (1859)

Author: Ashton Nichols, Walter E. Beach '56 Distinguished Chair in Sustainability Studies, Dickinson College

Abstract: This poster describes a website entitled Romantic Natural History. We often assume that Charles Darwin announced a new era in the scientific understanding of the natural world with the publication of his Origin of Species (1859). In fact, Darwin’s theory was the culmination of decades of speculation about connections between human beings and nonhuman “nature.” These ideas reflect not only in the work of natural scientists, philosophers, and theologians, but also the ideas of poets, novelists, and visual artists. Romantic Natural History surveys and organizes texts, images, and scholarship linking Romanticism and natural history in the period 1750-1859.

See: blogs.dickinson.edu/romnat

Accepted Poster Session: Integration of African solitary bee biodiversity information

Title: Integration of African solitary bee biodiversity information

Authors: Willem Coetzer, South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity
Connal Eardley, Plant Protection Research Institute
Janine Kelly, Plant Protection Research Institute

Abstract: This project will build on another project, funded by SABIF in 2010, in which about 500 000 specimen records from three South African museums were cleaned and migrated to Specify6. We are trying to develop capacity for (Specify-based) biodiversity information management in South Africa and Africa.

One of the main objectives of the current JRS-funded project is to make available online the Catalogue of Afrotropical Bees (Eardley and Urban, 2010). This catalogue lists 2755 valid bee names and 6989 invalid bee names in 26 671 citations of 1229 literature references. The catalogue has already been imported into Specify6. The catalogue is interesting because it represents a 30-year effort to tag legacy biodiversity literature semantically, on the theme of bees in Africa, even though the authors didn’t necessarily foresee the recent developments in biodiversity informatics. The catalogue also includes 6194 mentions of 59 countries where bees occur, 4005 mentions of 1219 visited plant species, 182 mentions of 115 plant species that bees nest in, 93 mentions of 66 parasite species hosted (some parasites are themselves bees) and 50 mentions of 37 hosts parasitised by parasitic bees.

How do we make the literature text itself available online?

Information on bees and pollination is very important in conservation and agriculture, particularly in the face of global change. There are excellent networks and collaborations on bee taxonomy and pollination ecology in Africa, which would benefit immensely from easier, integrated, structured and enriched access to bee biodiversity information and literature.

Life and Literature Speakers: Donat Agosti

Donat Agosti obtained his PhD in 1989 from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zürich, Switzerland. He is a specialist on the taxonomy of ants, and has spent much time in the field on all continents. He has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers, letters and newspaper articles covering ant taxonomy to copyright, and including a co-edited book on measuring and monitoring ant biodiversity. His most recent publication covered the ant fauna of the United Arab Emirates. He is involved in the conservation of biodiversity and creative ways of solving its impediments. He was a member of the US NASA-NGO/Natural History Museums steering community to create a science program for biodiversity at NASA, is founding member of the Conservation Commons and was awarded a US National Research Council fellowship for studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He is a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History New York and the Naturhistorisches Museum Bern, Switzerland. Currently, he is president of Plazi, a Swiss based international association aiming at creating semantically enhanced linked taxonomic literature, related repositories, XML schemas (TaxonX, Taxpub), and resolving the copyright barrier.