Smithsonian Libraries

Presentation for the Boston Library Consortium

   
  Originally uploaded by matt707

I, along with my colleague Chris Freeland of the Missouri Botanical Garden, was invited by the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) to make presentations on how the Biodiversity Heritage Library has created a portal to biodiversity literature from our diverse collections.

Attending the presentation were over 50 staff from BLC institutions (MIT, UMass-Amherst, Brandeis, MBL/WHOI, Boston Public Library, etc.), including Boston Public Library president Bernard Margolis.

We had an enthusiastic group that asked a number of great questions.

- Martin Kalfatovic

My presentation is available online at SlideShare

Global Library of Life: The Biodiversity Heritage Library. Martin R. Kalfatovic. Boston Library Consortium Meeting. Boston Public Library. 18 March 2008. Boston, MA.

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Data Curation Education Program Advisory Group

Smithsonian Libraries staff serve the library and museum communities in many ways. Many of us serve on professional committees as members, officers or advisers.

The University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) formed a new area of concentration, Data Curation, in their Master of Science program.

The University of Illinois GSLIS has brought together a number of distinguished librarians and informaticians to serve in an advisory role for the program. Currently, two Smithsonian Library staff serve on the advisory committee: Tom Garnett (Program Director, Biodiversity Heritage Library) and Martin Kalfatovic (Head, New Media Office and Preservation Services Department).

The advisory committee met this past week (March 28) at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis to discuss the status of the program, design case studies for graduate students to investigate, and to explore potential internship opportunities for students in the program at host institutions (such as the Smithsonian).

You can learn more about the Data Curation concentration at the UIUC/GSLIS website under DCEP.

- Martin Kalfatovic

Biodiversity Heritage Library Scanning

  2008-03-18-dscn2943 
  Originally uploaded by martin_kalfatovic

On March 18, I visited the Northeast Regional Scanning Center at Boston Public Library. The Northeast Regional Scanning Center is currently scanning books from Harvard (Museum of Comparative Zoology and Botany Libraries) and the Marine Biological Laboratory/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).

The Smithsonian Institution Libraries is a key player in the BHL and currently hosts a single scanning station in the National Museum of Natural History and is actively working with the Library of Congress on establishing the 10 station "FedScan" center at the LC's Adams Building.

Visit the BHL portal at: www.biodiversitylibrary.org and follow the latest developments on the BHL blog at biodiversitylibrary.blogspot.com.

- Martin Kalfatovic