Hello all, BHL NDSR Cohort speaking!
For the past couple of weeks we have been busy settling into our residencies, attending some conferences and preparing for future presentations. We created the NDSR at BHL blog to provide weekly updates about our projects. We have already engaged with the biodiversity community and applied feedback from readers to focus our research. Our blog draws from BHL’s open communication philosophy by encouraging feedback and dialogue on our posts.To catch you up to speed, we have prepared a quick overview of our recent blog posts.
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- Katie gave us an overview of transcription tools including: Ben Brumfield’s FromThePage, the Australian Museum’s DigiVol, the Smithsonian Institution’s Transcription Center, and The Zooniverse’s Project Builder and their Scribe development framework. As she works to integrate transcription services for handwritten materials (such as field notes and correspondence) into BHL, Katie explores these tools and their applicability to handwritten scientific materials.
- In order to perform a content analysis of the BHL corpus, Alicia began to map out what is included in the scope of biodiversity literature to begin to understand where BHL fits and where it still lacks coverage.
- We also reflected on several professional events. All of the residents attended the “BHL Bootcamp” hosted by Smithsonian Libraries in February where we were introduced to the BHL staff and administration, learned BHL history, how to use BHL technology and the BHL mission and culture. A few weeks after Bootcamp, Marissa attended a training session on the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature (EABL) project presented by Mariah Lewis of the New York Botanical Garden held at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. In early March, Marissa and Katie both attended the Code4Lib Conference in LA which brings together professionals who work for library, museums, and archives and deal with technology. Marissa and Katie each wrote reflections on workshops they attended and the lessons learned.
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We'll be providing a compendium of our blog posts like this every 6 weeks here on the BHL Blog. Be sure to subscribe to NDSR at BHL if you would like to read each new post as it is published. Next up, Ariadne will introduce history, important considerations, and ideas surrounding her project, and Pam will provide an update on her project about getting to know the BHL users and how they interact with BHL.