Given that BHL is turning 20, and there is a lot of thought being given to BHL’s future, I thought it might be useful consider what BHL has looked like in the past. At one point BHL envisaged a global network of regional partners, such as BHL Australia, BHL China, BHL Europe, BHL Egypt, and BHL SciELO. This idea of a less centralised, more globally distributed BHL has not survived. Of all the partners outside the United States, only BHL Australia is still a thing (as far as I can work out).
What, if any, are the lessons to be learned from this? The obvious answer is “money”. BHL-Europe was a three year project that effectively ended once its funding ended (the curse of having enough money to start something, but not enought to keep it going). The BHL-Europe website has long gone, and while some BHL-Europe content has made its way into BHL, a sizeable fraction is still missing. I don’t know the reasons for closure of the other efforts, perhaps the rationale for a regional BHL is not as compelling as it first appeared?
BHL Australia shows what can be achieved with a local source of funding (the Atlas of Living Australia) and highly motivated staff (lead by @bhl_nicole), I suspect this combination of money and people is hard to replicate.
The idea of regional nodes keeps coming up in biodiversity projects, both the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the International Barcode of Life Consortium have nodes. If BHL were to every consider going down this road again it would be interesting to learn from GBIF and iBOL what makes that organisational structure work.
