Relevance of digital library projects for archival material and cultural heritage
European natural history collections manage over 1.5 bn objects from the world s biodiversity heritage, covering most of the species described. These are reference objects for all the common and famous species, incl. those of high economic importance and even those that have already gone extinct. Many have great cultural value as they were collected during historic expeditions and scientific endeavours by well known epochal explorers or scientists like Darwin, Linnaeus, Humboldt, or Stanley. EUROPEANA the portal of the European Digital library is making these treasures available to the general public, in addition to providing scientists and policy makers with a substantial information source needed in the understanding and protection of global biodiversity. In this talk we will present Digital library projects in which the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) is involved at different levels such as advisory on Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and as important content provider due to its unique collections, libraries and archival material. First the ongoing international initiative Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and the associated European project BHL-Europe will be presented. BHL-Europe involves 28 natural history museums, botanical gardens. Their libraries hold the majority of the world s published knowledge on the discovery and subsequent description of biological diversity. However, digital access to this knowledge is difficult. The objective of the project is to make available biodiversity information to everyone by improving the interoperability biodiversity digital libraries. Secondly we will introduce the Field Note Book Project led by the Smithsonian (Washington), that aims to provide access to original field notes documenting expeditions of biodiversity research over the last two-hundred years. It will result in a cataloging tool to bridge the metadata gap between collections-level custodial control and item-level descriptions. This enhanced level of description will improve access to these important research materials that are frequently difficult to discover and to access remotely. Finally we will speak about the European project Open Up! starting in March 2011. It will initially make available over 1 M high quality images, movies, animal sound files, and natural history artwork from 23 institutions in 12 European countries. Access will be based on the established technical infrastructure of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Once the pathway from museums and GBIF to EUROPEAN has been created, it will provide a steadily stream of additional objects that have entered the network.