22-26 Feb 2010
BHL-Europe Project and Technical Management Meeting
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
The main goal of the meeting was to review the work plan and plan the next months of the project towards the first technical review of BHL-Europe in May 2010. The meeting was designed as a work group meeting with a small number of participants to work efficiently on the various deliverables. We reviewed and approved the deliverables of month 9 of the project and detailed the steps towards the deliverables of month 12 of the project. The product descriptions were prepared and the team members were assigned to be responsible for the deliverable preparation. In side meetings, we prepared the content provider and use case meeting that is scheduled for March 2010 in Vienna. In another side meeting we revised and completed the questionnaire for the first large user survey that is one of our important deliverables of the near future. This user survey will be launched on 15 March 2010 and will be opened for more than four weeks to all of our target users. The main goal of the survey is the review.
11 Jan 2010
Launch of the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) – 2010
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
During the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was opened for signature. One main goal of this convention is the conservation of biological diversity. In 2002, the parties to the CBD developed the goal to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. To further underpin the importance of that goal, the General Assembly of the United Nations decided to proclaim 2010 the „International Year of Biodiversity“. Germany holds the presidency of the CBD until October 2010 and thus was launching the IYB 2010. The opening ceremony was celebrated in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Federal Minister for the Environment, Norbert Röttgen, the Director General of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Achim Steiner and numerous other prominent guests. The goal formulated in 2002 will not be achieved in 2010, as stated by Angela Merkel during the ceremony. Merkel further explained that it is difficult to halt the loss of the biological diversity, but the change is important now and immediate. The Museum für Naturkunde used the opportunity to present BHL-Europe and other important biodiversity projects in which it is involved to the international audience of this event.
16 - 18 Nov 2009
BHL-Europe General and Workgroup Meeting
The BHL-Europe Meeting took place in the National Museum, Prague, and meetings were held in both museum buildings. This was a contractual meeting followed by an important series of workshops marking the end of the consensusbuilding phase of the project.
On Sunday 15 November, BHL development priotities where discussed in the New building of the National Museum. The full series of meetings began on Monday, 16 November, attended by 42 delegates representing most project partners. The morning session consisted of reports on each project work package and the eliverables for month 6. In the afternoon Lizzy Komen reported about developments in Europeana, and Tom Garnett and Chris Freeland gave a presentation on current BHL developments in the United States of America. On Tuesday, 17 November 2009 there were workshops in two parallel sessions on architecture, content and dissemination. Patricia Mergen presented a report on the outcomes and mid-term review of the Sterna Project. On Wednesday, 18 November 2009 the workshops on architecture and content continued. Lizzy Komen presented a demo of Europeana content ingestion and content checker. Five working groups were established to further work on content management, use cases, and metadata. The main meeting was finished by 15:00, although the Communication Working Group and Technology Management Board continued in parallel sessions.
12 Aug 2009
BHL-Europe at Systematics 2009 in Leiden
BHL-Europe is invited to give a Keynote lecture during the Systematics 2009 conference (http://www.biosyst.eu/). The presentation will be on Wednesday, 12 August 2009, 8:50 in the morning and is given by the Project Coordinator Henning Scholz. The lecture aims in introducing the project to the scientific community. This hopefully helps to get in touch with potential and future content providers and also to get feedback for future improvements of the BHL-Europe system.
9-12 Aug 2009
BHL-Europe summer meeting in Leiden
Phase 1 of the BHL-Europe project is ending 31 July 2009. Therefore, the BHL-Europe consortium meets in Leiden to review recent achievements and plan for future work. Besides a more general review, the future technological developments are key for the agenda. More than two days will be spent discussing the BHL-Europe system architecture and design, the metadata harmonization procedures and the portal functionalities. The meeting location is The Naturalis Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum in Leiden.
1 May 2009
Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe – Towards a global library of life
Managed by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, an ambitious and innovative EU project started on 1 May 2009. The ’Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe‘ (BHL-Europe) has a total budget of €3.4 million and will last for three years. More than 60 scientists, librarians and IT specialists attended the Kick-off meeting between 10-15 May 2009 at the Museum für Naturkunde. Altogether, 28 institutions from 14 countries are working towards a global library of life.
An important impediment for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) of the United Nations is the lack of access to core information on animals and plants. This information is concentrated in the scientific books and journals of the past centuries. At the moment, the only way to access to this knowledge is to visit a number of different libraries. This complicates much of the fundamental research in biological science. Since 2007, the Biodiversity Heritage Library has been systematically removing this impediment by making this literature available over the Web. BHL-Europe will now further develop, expand, and enhance the Biodiversity Heritage Library by bringing together the extensive collections of biodiversity literature held in major European natural history, botanical, and research libraries. As part of the project, a multilingual software interface will be developed enabling users to search in their native language. Innovative search functionality facilitates quick access to all of the information required by the user. In addition to the biodiversity community Portal, all the literature will be accessible through the European Digital Library - EUROPEANA. The wider public, citizen scientists, and decision makers will have unlimited access to these important sources of information. Everybody will be able to get first-hand information on animals and plants study rare original works of important scientists like Charles Darwin or Alexander von Humboldt, and admire artwork in publications from the 17th or 18th century. Conservation organisations will have a tool to collect data on rare or threatened species in order to better plan protective actions. Other applications are possible and much more information will be available in the future.
Contact:
Dr. Henning Scholz, Project Coordinator
Phone +49(0)30 2093 8864
Fax +49(0)30 2093 8868
bhl-europe@mfn-berlin.de
