Prefacing the recent Taxonomic Data Working Group (TDWG) conference in Nairobi, the Biodiversity Heritage Library of Africa gathered fifteen representatives from eleven institutions throughout South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda for a BHL partner workshop. The BHL Africa Workshop was an opportunity to provide training and help build capacity amongst the current signatories of the BHL Africa MOU. The workshop was funded as part of the 2015 JRS Biodiversity Foundation grant, awarded to the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), to facilitate the growth of BHL Africa.

Trainings covered all aspects of partnership with BHL Africa, including overviews of the structure and governance of BHL; demonstrations of the BHL website; in-depth discussions about BHL collection scope, development, digitization and curation workflows, and metadata requirements; guidance on copyright and permissions issues; methods for communication and outreach collaboration; and intensive hands-on training for several BHL tools, including the issue tracking system Gemini and the digitization workflow tool Macaw.

JRS Trustee Robert Guralnick was enthusiastic about the contribution of the workshop toward project goals, “This workshop is yet another example of the exciting strides the BHL Africa libraries are making towards digitizing and providing open access to their unique and important collections.”

To read more about the workshop and see a copy of the workshop presentation, visit the BHL blog post linked here.