BHL-Africa: scanning locally, collaborating globally to create a Global Biodiversity Heritage Library

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize the legacy literature of biodiversity and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global “biodiversity commons.  BHL was created in 2006 as a direct response to the needs of the taxonomic community for access to early literature. The original BHL organizational model, based on US and UK partners, provided a template for, first, BHL Europe, and then a series of global nodes, most recently, BHL Africa and BHL Singapore. As the BHL moved from project to a cornerstone of biodiversity infrastructure, sustainability, appropriate expansion, and collaboration with national and pan-national digital libraries became more important.  Global BHL has successfully demonstrated that a global, collaborative alliance of libraries, archives and museums can mobilize to digitize and provide content through a single open access portal  http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ Working within the unique and often challenging environments of Sub-Saharan Africa, BHL assisted in the creation and launch of BHL Africa in April 2013. BHL Africa is an inclusive network of African libraries and institutions organized into three regions in Western/ Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. BHL Africa was the first global BHL node that was formed directly under aegis of librarians.  Core values include open access, collaboration, interoperability, and transparency. Current collaboration of partners includes the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the University of Pretoria. Through their partnership, they have demonstrated attention to user needs, organization, and technology contribute to the success and sustainability of BHL. SANBI identified user needs: Books, Journals, Images and Field notebooks. The University of Pretoria: Library Digitization Services has the tools, technology and expertise. A 3-year JRS Biodiversity Foundation grant supports the continued growth of BHL Africa through assessment, collaboration, and digitization of African collections. Being a new organization, the next goals include conducting outreach to expand active BHL Africa participation through engagement with current members and recruiting possible other African institutions to participate, by improving communications and having workshops and trainings for BHL Africa member institutions. They will also analyze the existing capacity for participation and content aggregation. The project will also stabilize the governance of the organization and infrastructure through sustainability planning.  As BHL Africa is such a young organization, this will be the first step towards a sustainable platform for digitized biodiversity material in the region.