Costa Rica´s National Biodiversity Institute and its Bioliteracy Program:Sharing knowledge and information about Biodiversity with society

Costa Rica has 4% of world´s biodiversity in 0.03% of the territory

COSTA RICA´S NATIONAL CONSERVATION STRATEGY

Save representative samples of ecosystems

Know existing biodiversity, where it is and its natural history

Use these resources sustainably for socio-economic development

WHAT IS INBio?

• Created in 1989

• A non governmental,

non profit

organization

• Declared a national

public

interest institution in

2006

Generate- Process- Share

Bioliteracy

Biobusiness development

Biodiversity conservation

Policy and legislation

Technical assitance and trainning

Other sources of information

TICS

Knowledge and information generation

From Forest to Society

Biological Collections

• 3.6 million specimens

• 28.294 species of the

country´s biodiversity

• 2.716 new species (a new

species every 2.6 days)

• 81 new genera

• 2 new subfamilies

Some Products

• 1.500 scientific publications

• 59 field guides published

• 21 electronic documents

published

• 4072 species pages

• 22.000 daily WEB page hits

• Educational materials

• Virtual Learning Communities

• Biodiversity theme park

Cyberhives: Virtual Learning Communities

Stimulate creative and innovative use of science and technology in the classroom, in the field, and in cyberspace to generate learning experiences that will encourage students to build knowledge about their own community´s biodiversity and establish Virtual Learning Communities.

Actors

• Schools and high schools with Internet access• Students from grades: 3, 5, 7, 10 and 11• Three teachers per school• Scientists and parataxonomists from INBio• Ministry of Education – Omar Dengo Foundation • Ministry of Environment and Energy

Methodology1. Training of teachers2. Training of students3. Development of project supported by community and parataxonomists4. Communication of results in Science Symposium

Future work

• Scale up the project to the whole country• Address other fields• Develop international communities• Explore mobile technology applications

Analyzing BHL at INBio• 9 curators (botany, entomology and fungi): “I´ve used it very little” “Yes I

´ve used it to search for scientific articles and in grant writing since it is recommended“ “I have not used it yet but is seems interesting and valuable”, etc.

• 3 educators: “great start but to scientific for students and teachers”. “Needs information processing and packaging in order to be used by broader audiences”. “Wonderful resource for scientist but not for students”

• 2 conservation experts: “I didn´t know it existed, it is extraordinary and very valuable”. “I use it but not very often”.

• 2 biodiversity informatics experts “Today users search biodiversity information through literature or databases…its important and necessary to continue and that the content of scanned pages can be accessed through key words…”

• 1 librarian (OTS and INBio): “In my case, that I seek to rescue what has been published about Costa Rica in the biological field, BHL has been, as we said when we were kids, the discovery of a valuable treasure…the fact that someone digitized the information allows me to add value extracting a summary and assigning descriptors and key words, so the user can access easier the information of interest”.

Some questions about BHL at INBio

• How well is BHL known around the world?• Which are BHL target audiences?• Who and how many are its main actual users?• Scientific community can recommend which

information should be digitized and review intellectual property rights.

1) What do different audiences want from digitized literature resources?

• Packaged thematic, organized, pertinent and enjoyable information

• Images linked to articles• Short, dynamic, interesting, processed information

from reliable sources• Information that answers basic, frequently asked

questions• Easy to understand information that motivates

exploration• Be able to make new searches (more than scientific

names, species atributes)

2) How can we make the digital resources in BHL accessible and useful to different learning groups?

• Strategic partners in scientific centers around the world• Free access. • Summaries and abstracts• API: Application Programming Interface• Web 2.0• Link BHL to countries biodiversity databases and scientific

research institutions web sites around the world• Virtual learning communities• Species pages• Mobile technology• Improve search engines, information categories, key words

3) What are the tools that provide added value to the resources in the BHL?

• Different levels of depth in the information available• Tool wiki style where users can build (construct)

knowledge based on BHL content• Personalized collection of biodiversity information• Titles where concepts are applied to scientific research• My own report, children doing basic scientific research

and organizing their own information • Species identification through species sounds and

images for non specialized audiences that integrate BHL information

4) Can we leverage these audiences to provide crowd-sourcing tasks such as identification of images, species descriptions, historical range and distribution information?

• Yes but we need to differentiate popular knowledge from scientific expertise

• Provide tools for identification without exceding the audience level of understanding

• Different tools for rural and urban audiences• Provide applications for mobile technology

5) How can we incorporate BHL resources into electronic textbooks combined with content from EOL?

• Linking BHL references to species pages • Using species pages as a medium level of

information depth, allowing the user to link to BHL deeper levels

• First level of basic information is what general public can gather through mobile technology (tablets, smartphones, etc)

Some of Freeman Tilden´s 6 Principles of interpretation

Prioritizing audiences

Interpreting content per audience so it is enjoyable, pertinent, significant, thematic and organized.

Thank you!www.inbio.ac.cr

Natalia ZamoraSanto Domingo de Heredia, Costa Rica.Apartado 22-3100.Teléfono (506) 2507-8113 Fax: 2507-8270.E-mail: nazamora@inbio.ac.cr

Digital information and media

•508 media reports in 2010 (TV, radio, press)•9.246.159 anual average web page visits in 2010 •14.241 Facebook friends up to October 17, 2011• 4 blogs (Arthropods, Fungi, Editorial and Dr. Gamez)•INBioparque Facebook 6,817friends to October 17, 2011

IN A FEW WORDS:

The Cyberhives portal

www.cibercolmenas.net

Some ideas• Social Network campaigns with interesting data about

publications, summaries that link to more in depth information if wanted.

• BHL Kids with a more appropiate interphase for this audience, with games and educational activities that implies searches in BHL.

• BHL complimentary in tablets. • Integrate BHL to One Laptop per Child initiative. • QR codes in zoos, national parks, science centers etc. that

link to species pages and some publications in BHL about that species.

• Add recommendation function to BHL. Most read or popular articles and publications.

• BHL available in more languages.• BHL could be showing packaged info of theme days globally

or per country according to where that users are visiting from.

• Emphasis on historical value of publications linked to special dates.

• BHL communication campaign.