Biodiversity Heritage Library/Collaborative work
BHL-Wiki collaborations on the Wikimedia ecosystem.
BHL across Wikimedia Projects
The collaborative work of BHL-Wiki is cross-project in nature. Check a bit of the history of the communities in the different platforms:
Details
BHL on Wikipedia in English
The mutualistic interaction of BHL and English Wikipedia has roots in 2007 (first diff, blog 1, blog 2), blossoming with a participation on Wikimania 2012 and yielding fruits to the date. Gradually, BHL connections with the Wikimedia movement grew to include other projects, and now form a network of collaborators to Unify Biodiversity Knowledge to Support Life on a Sustainable Planet.
BHL on Wikimedia Commons
The connection of BHL with Wikimedia Commons goes as far back as 2012, where it was proposed as an avenue to "expose the fabulous illustrations that we already have in our Flickr account and have them used for article creation and species description in the future." The category for BHL tracks the contributions to Commons, counting over 300,000 files. More than just uploading files, the BHL community is actively working on metadata models, with a focus on Structured Data.
BHL on Wikidata
Wikidata, as a hub in the semantic web and a powerful platform for Linked Open Data is at the core of the BHL vision for making biodiversity data truly available. It provides the backbone for tagging species and other types of data on Wikimedia Commons. It is connected to the wider, complex data flows of BHL and also as an identifier hub, helping disambiguate authors and works and connecting to other sources of authority control. The BHL Project on Wikidata attracted many collaborators over the years and provides a robust gathering point for fans of linked data and biodiversity.
BHL on Wikisource
Wikisource, as a platform for transcribing open access works, was naturally within the scope of BHL from an early point. While transcription work has relied on different platforms, including the Smithsonian Transcription Center, there are over 200 works scanned in BHL that are being transcribed in Wikisource, and for which volunteers are always welcome.
Tools
bhl2wiki
Developed by Rod Page, bhl2wiki is a web application to add items for scholarly works on Wikidata based on DOIs from BHL, thus leveraging disambiguation work by the BHL Team over the years.