Reflecting on Open Access and Code4Lib 2017 | NDSR at BHL

"I spent a lot of time at Code4Lib proud of BHL’s mission and methodologies, but never more so than the end of Day 3 when I realized the success of our communication strategies and its implications for providing open access to biodiversity heritage literature, illustrations, data sets, and special collections. As a distributed staff we need to communicate clearly and openly, work flexibly, and develop iteratively.

If you recall a blog post the other week that discussed the Residents’ experience at our BHL Bootcamp, several of the presentations directly addressed the requirement for open and collaborative communication strategies for a distributed network of institutions and staff. In that post I identified the framework that all BHL staff are committed to supporting in their professional communication, namely, the philosophy of promoting open idea exchange and respecting individual contributions to the larger organization. Each of the identified tools (listservs, Gemini issue tracker, public and staff wikis, established schedule of conference calls, collaborative documentation, and outreach campaigns) are all opportunities for staff members to work inclusively and openly.

The BHL Documentation Center provides information on nearly every function of the library and a contact email to direct questions. Some items are pdfs or link out to third party hosts, but the current template for creating documentation is an open and editable Google Doc that welcomes collaboration. In addition to the Documentation Center, the Staff Wiki includes more documentation than one could ever review. As a temporary Resident, this open documentation allowed me to dive right into working through the underlying metadata structures and figuring out how the systems work together. BHL’s outreach goes farther than any program I can think of and as a matter of practice invites users to improve our metadata, enrich our collections, and identify opportunities for improvement. This depth of collaboration has created an environment of discovery and curiosity where researchers and librarians find fascinating new ways to use and provide access to biodiversity data."