Collaboration & Communication Tools used by Biodiversity Heritage Library Refining Strategies for Success Trish Rose-Sandler Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO Keri Thompson Smithsonian Institution Libraries NMNH, 10th and Constitution Ave NW Washington, DC William Ulate, Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO Martin Kalfatovic Smithsonian Institution Libraries NMNH, 10th and Constitution Ave NW Washington, DC Constance Rinaldo, Ernst Mayr Library, MCZ, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA| BHL-Europe BHL Australia Collaboration and Communication with Users Collaboration and Communication within the Organization The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a global initiative of collaborating projects and activities that seeks to digitize, preserve and make available to the world the legacy literature of biodiversity. What started as a consortium of 10 natural history, research and botanical libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2005 has now grown to 14 members as of January 2012. BHL now includes collaborating projects in Europe, Australia, China, Brazil, and Egypt with over40 individual institutions as members. Adoption of collaboration tools among BHL partners, both freely available and commercial and employment of those tools in sometimes non-traditional ways, has enabled a virtual organization to perform as effectively as a non-virtual organization. In recognition of its outstanding collaborative partnerships, the BHL received the Outstanding Collaboration Citation Award in 2010 from the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association. The BHL ‘s loosely coupled operational structure allows for nimbleness of decision making. As a result, BHL has been able to respond to its users and the needs of the biodiversity community much more quickly. Planning and consensus are achieved by balancing the use of informal and formal, synchronous and asynchronous tools. The same balance is sought when communicating with users. Informal channels such as twitter enable quick responses to requests and suggestions, while formal surveys, logged feedback, and structured interviews allow us to analyze how BHL content and tools are being used. Synchronous communication via Skype to global partners, often enabled by caffeine. Skype PRC-US Skype US-AUS Skype VA-MO Asynchronous methods such as email, Google docs and wikis are used to document issues and decisions and serve as an informal knowledge base for the virtual organization User input is given equal weight as input from BHL staff and oftentimes users suggestions result in newly available content or user interface changes within days or weeks rather than months or years. In this way users feel they are active contributors to the BHL rather than just passive users of its content and become much more invested in its success and longevity. Putting content on flickr encourages discovery & re-use of images by the general public. Yearly face to face technical and administrative meetings for global partners as well as US/UK members let staff get to know each other, and facilitate efficient planning, prioritizing and work distribution. Regular conference calls are scheduled for administrative, technical and workflow groups in BHL-US/UK. Over 30 staff in 4 time zones call in. There are also email lists for each group. Feedback is solicited informally via social media and in person at conferences, and formally via surveys and forms which feed into our issue tracking system. BHL is now looking to incorporate such user created or enhanced content into our existing offerings to further enrich our services. In this way the crowdsourced data completes an object’s “digital content life cycle” whose primary processes include: creation, management, discovery, use and reuse. All data from BHL, such as OCR text, bibliographic information and taxonomic names are available openly for reuse and repurposing via API or download. Numerous projects have taken advantage of BHL’s open data and some have even developed applications that re- contextualize it such as the Encyclopedia of Life, BioStor and Synynyms. 0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000 BHL staff wiki use edits page views BHL at a glance: 2006: 10 member institutions, 42 participating staff 1735 volumes, 720,000 pages online 2012: 40 member institutions, 140+ participating staff 106,000 volumes, 39 million pages online
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Collaboration & Communication Tools used by Biodiversity Heritage Library
Refining Strategies for Success Trish Rose-Sandler Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO
Keri Thompson Smithsonian Institution Libraries NMNH, 10th and Constitution Ave NW Washington, DC William Ulate, Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO Martin Kalfatovic Smithsonian Institution Libraries NMNH, 10th and Constitution Ave NW Washington, DC
Constance Rinaldo, Ernst Mayr Library, MCZ, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA|
BHL-Europe
BHL Australia
Collaboration and Communication with Users Collaboration and Communication within the Organization The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a global initiative of collaborating projects and activities that seeks to digitize, preserve and make available to the world the legacy literature of biodiversity. What started as a consortium of 10 natural history, research and botanical libraries in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2005 has now grown to 14 members as of January 2012. BHL now includes collaborating projects in Europe, Australia, China, Brazil, and Egypt with over40 individual institutions as members. Adoption of collaboration tools among BHL partners, both freely available and commercial and employment of those tools in sometimes non-traditional ways, has enabled a virtual organization to perform as effectively as a non-virtual organization. In recognition of its outstanding collaborative partnerships, the BHL received the Outstanding Collaboration Citation Award in 2010 from the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association.
The BHL ‘s loosely coupled operational structure allows for nimbleness of decision making. As a result, BHL has been able to respond to its users and the needs of the biodiversity community much more quickly. Planning and consensus are achieved by balancing the use of informal and formal, synchronous and asynchronous tools. The same balance is sought when communicating with users. Informal channels such as twitter enable quick responses to requests and suggestions, while formal surveys, logged feedback, and structured interviews allow us to analyze how BHL content and tools are being used.
Synchronous communication via
Skype to global partners, often enabled
by caffeine.
Skype PRC-US
Skype US-AUS
Skype VA-MO
Asynchronous methods such as email, Google docs and wikis are used to document issues and decisions and serve as an informal knowledge base for the virtual organization
User input is given equal weight as input from BHL staff and oftentimes users suggestions result in newly available content or user interface changes within days or weeks rather than months or years. In this way users feel they are active contributors to the BHL rather than just passive users of its content and become much more invested in its success and longevity.
Putting content on flickr encourages discovery & re-use of images by the general public.
Yearly face to face technical and administrative meetings for global partners as well as US/UK members let staff get to know each other, and facilitate efficient planning, prioritizing and work distribution.
Regular conference calls are scheduled for administrative, technical and workflow groups in BHL-US/UK. Over 30 staff in 4 time zones call in. There are also email lists for each group.
Feedback is solicited informally via social media and in person at conferences, and formally via surveys and forms which feed into our issue tracking system.
BHL is now looking to incorporate such user created or enhanced content into our existing offerings to further enrich our services. In this way the crowdsourced data completes an object’s “digital content life cycle” whose primary processes include: creation, management, discovery, use and reuse.
All data from BHL, such as OCR text, bibliographic information and taxonomic names are available openly for reuse and repurposing via API or download. Numerous projects have taken advantage of BHL’s open data and some have even developed applications that re-contextualize it such as the Encyclopedia of Life, BioStor and Synynyms.
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 90000
BHL staff wiki use
edits
page views
BHL at a glance: 2006: 10 member institutions, 42 participating staff 1735 volumes, 720,000 pages online 2012: 40 member institutions, 140+ participating staff 106,000 volumes, 39 million pages online