GLAM/Newsletter/March 2025/Contents/Biodiversity Heritage Library report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XV, Issue III, March 2025

Biodiversity Heritage Library report

BHL-Wiki Working Group March monthly highlights

Agenda, notes & recording of the March 2025 meeting

The agenda for the meeting can be found at this link. The agenda document gives notes taken during the meeting, action items, as well as the dates of future online meetings and the zoom link to join. Links to the recordings of the previous meetings are also given.

The next BHL wiki working group is anticipated to be held on Monday 21st of April at 18:00 UTC.

Copyright statements

A detailed discussion was had amongst the group concerning copyright statements on BHL files in Wikimedia Commons. The current BHL copyright statement stance for publications on its website was outlined, the history of BHL on Flickr and the copyright statements of images originally uploaded onto that platform and then subsequently uploaded into Wikimedia Commons was explained.

The working group agreed that best practice guidelines around copyright data in Wikimedia Commons for BHL images was needed. JJ Dearborn, the BHL Data Manager, was to add a ticket concerning this piece of work to the working group’s GIThub scrum board. Once the best practice guidelines have been created and agreed to by the group, the intention is to post them to the BHL Meta page and the BHL Wikimedia Commons page.

The group agreed that where editors come across inconsistencies between the copyright statements on BHL and those statements on BHL sourced images in Wikimedia Commons, editors should investigate and update statements where and when we can.

Biodiversity User Group

The group again discussed the creation of a Biodiversity User Group on Wiki. Jake Orlowitz explained that we could easily establish a user group right now but members have to commit to a longer running engagement. Jake and Tiago Lubiana agreed to meet to discuss the potential for Tiago to assist with the administrative tasks needed to establish a user group during his tenure as the BHL Wikimedian in Residence.

BHL Wikimedian in Residence update

Tiago, the BHL Wikimedian in Residence, recently updated the BHL Wiki community on the progress he continues to make in his role. See his biweekly updates at this link.

At this meeting Tiago asked for feedback on a new tool he has created for BHL images. See this link for the tool.

Tiago also shared that the updated BHL creator id dataset has now been placed in the mix’n’match tool under the name Biodiversity Heritage Library Creator. Tiago has also streamed as session showing how to use the tool.

Three outreach events planned

Three outreach events are currently being organised by Giovanna Fontenelle from the Wikimedia Foundation and Tiago, the BHL Wikimedian in residence. These edit-a-thons aim to add images from the South American and African collections of the BHL collection, enriched with Commons structured data, to the Spanish, French and Portuguese Wikipedia. More information on these events can be found via the BHL Meta-Wiki page.