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Smithsonian Institution Libraries received funding in 2004 to digitize Sherborn’s Index Animalium. The initial project was to digitize the pages images and re-key the data into a simple data structure. As the project evolved, a more complex database was developed to enable quality searching to retrieve species names and to search the bibliography. The OCRed, scanned Index Animalium was re-keyed to the specifications of 99.995% accuracy rate. Working off the lessons learned by MBL WHOI Library’s project for Neave’s Nomenclator Zoologicus, simple expressions were used to break apart the re-keyed text. Coinciding with the development of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (2005), it became obvious there was a need to integrate the scanned Index Animalium, BHL’s scanned taxonomic literature, and taxonomic intelligence. The challenges of working with legacy taxonomic citation, computer matching algorithms, and making connections have brought us to today’s goal of making Sherborn available as open linked data. The goal is to allow repurposing of data, partnering with others to allow machine-to-machine communications and sharing information for broad discovery and access.
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Unlocking the Index Animalium:From Paper Slips to Bytes and Bits
Smithsonian Institution LibrariesSuzanne C. PilskJoel M. Richard
Martin R. Kalfatovic
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
African ArtAfrican American History and CultureAnthropologyAmerican ArtAmerican HistoryAsian and Middle Eastern ArtAviation history and Space FlightDesign and Decorative ArtsEnvironmental Management and
Ecology
History of Science and TechnologyLatino History and CultureMaterials ResearchModern and Contemporary ArtMuseologyNative American History and Culture Natural HistoryPostal HistoryTropical BiologyTrade LiteratureWorld’s Fair Ephemera
Libraries and Librarians
Metadata
How to make THIS into 1’s and 0’s
Digitization
Metadata Fail
The Squire
Metadata Successes
Connecting Index to Sources
Bibliography = Metadata
Lost… Just Lost
Steps to Improve
Vision of Global Natural History Library
In any well-appointed Natural History Library there should be found every book and every edition of every book dealing in the remotest way with the subjects concerned.
Charles Davies Sherborn, Epilogue to Index Animalium, March 1922
Taxonomic Literature 2nd Edition
Taxonomic Literature: A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types (second edition)
15 volumes guide to the literature of systematic botany published between 1753 and 1940
Organized by author ~ Citation for the author’s surname
Numbered entries of the author’s publications ~ Suggested short-title &abbreviation of short-title for use in taxonomic publications
TL2 is a standard by which author’s names and titles should be abbreviated
★ Linked Open Data – 5 Stars ★
★ Available on the web (whatever format), but with an open licence ★★ Available as machine-readable
structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)
★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context
• Shareable• Extensible• Re-Usable• International
Future
Thanks To Many• Joel Richard• Martin Kalfatovic• Grace Costantino• Courtney Shaw• Keri Thompson• Interns too numerous to
name• Volunteers too numerous to
name
• Gilbert Borrego• Carolyn Sheffield• Bianca Crowley • Becky Morin• Mike Lichtenburg• David Remsen• Patrick Leary• Chris Freeland
And The Birthday Boy: Charles Davies Sherborn
Contact information: PilskS@si.edu
Interesting SourcesIndex Animalium http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/indexanimalium/
Taxonomic Literature New Versionwww.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2
Connecting Contentresearch.calacademy.org/library/fieldnotes
The Field Book Projectwww.mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/index.html
Linked Open Datalinkeddata.org/
Smithsonian Institution Librarieswww.sil.si.edu/
Smithsonian Institutionwww.si.edu/
Biodiversity Heritage Librarywww.biodiversitylibrary.org/
Internet Archivewww.archive.org/
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