Abstract:

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) provides open access to over 54 million pages of biodiversity literature. Much of this literature is either in the public domain or is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons framework. Anyone can therefore freely reuse much of the information and data provided by BHL. This presentation will outline how the work of a citizen scientist using BHL content might benefit research scientists. It will discuss how a citizen scientist can reuse and link BHL literature and data in Wikipedia and Wikidata. It will explain the research efficiencies that can be obtained through this reuse and linking, for example through the consolidation of database identifiers. The presentation will outline the subsequent reuse of the BHL data added to Wikipedia and Wikidata by the internet search engine Google. It will discuss an example of the linking of this information in the citizen science observation platform iNaturalist. The presentation will explain how BHL, as a result of its open reuse licensing of information and data, helps in the creation of more accurate citizen science generated biodiversity data and assists with the wider and more effective dissemination of biodiversity information.

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