Trends and Developments in Biodiversity Informatics
Flora brasiliensis Revisited
Current Trends and Future Visions of the Virtual Botanical
Library
Douglas Lloyd Holland, Missouri Botanical Garden
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Topics for this presentation will include trends and technologies in
digital libraries and evolving models in scholarly communication We
will also address what work is being done specifically within the
botanical community on virtual library projects. To conclude, a vision
of a geographically and institutionally independent virtual botanical
library will be explored.
Many different communities are contributing to digital library
initiatives. These include the full spectrum of cultural and scientific
institutions, libraries, museums and government agencies. The
challenge is to maintain innovation and growth, but also employ
standards and protocols across this spectrum to insure quality,
interoperability and retrievability. I will use examples of current
virtual botanical libraries to discuss national and international trends
and technology in digitization and digital libraries. Examples will
include JSTOR scholarly journals, Flora of North America, Flora
Mesoamericana and the Missouri Botanical Garden rare books digitization
project.
Three of these projects focus on digitizing existing copies of printed
literature. Whereas Flora Mesoamerican is forging a new model for flora
production. This raises the distinction between reformatting historic
literature versus new models of "born digital" publications and
scholarly communication. We will discuss new models for providing the
most widely available, lowest cost access to scientific publications and
information. One of the most promising models is the Open Archives
Initiative. This tool can be used to create a universal virtual
botanical library, unrestricted by access fees and geographical
location.
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