The NBII Library of Images From the Environment (NBII LIFE) - Accessed by Users Worldwide

The NBII Library of Images From the Environment (NBII LIFE) is a collaborative platform for agencies, organizations, and individual partners to share high quality, authoritative images of our natural world. Subjects cover species, species interactions, landscapes, research, management, and environmental topics. The goal is to manage images as scientific records and ensure they are useful for future research and decision making.

Contributors and images must meet certain criteria, including that the images are available for nonprofit use and that detailed information (e.g., date, location, and context) is attached.

These standards and subject diversity make LIFE a valuable resource – as research and user feedback have confirmed. One type of user we get feedback from are those who contribute images to LIFE; examples include Finding Species, different groups within the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the U.S. National Herbarium, Smithsonian Institution. But who in the broader community is accessing the site, and how do they use the images?

There are limits to what the U.S. government can record about users accessing government Web sites, but we know hundreds of thousands of people viewed millions of pages within the NBII LIFE in 2009, most from U.S. government computers. Globally, an average of 150 countries (out of 203 recorded) also had users entering the library each month. Leading countries include Canada, Great Britain, and India; but small countries such as Liechtenstein and Vatican City also accessed the NBII LIFE Web site.

Many organizations point to the NBII LIFE as a resource, including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Other federal sites include the USGS, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the Library of Congress. The Academy of Natural Sciences’ Vireo Web site includes the LIFE under “Sites Worth Seeing” and Matcha College lists LIFE in an article, “100 Excellent Websites for Exploring the Ocean Online”.


LIFE is also finding that diverse organizations are using
photographs for exhibits, Web sites, publications, and research, including federal agencies such as the USGS (the biggest user), the USFWS, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institute of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Smithsonian Institution. Local and state agencies (e.g., New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation) and nonprofits (e.g., the Defenders of Wildlife) have also used LIFE's images. One research project incorporating LIFE images is the Tree of Life project.


News and information organizations also have used NBII LIFE images to illustrate online articles, including Public Radio International, Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, the Washington Post, and Science magazine. Also, hundreds of educational sites incorporate LIFE images into their lesson plans: students have used images for book reports and in computer modeling classes. Other users include libraries, museums, botanical gardens, film makers, artists, and bloggers. Users’ interests have been very diverse.

The NBII LIFE's images may soon be used in additional ways. The LIFE team is partnering with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to make image metadata available to more researchers, especially modelers. Metadata about a photograph of a rare bird at a certain place and time could be fed into models predicting the effects of climate change on species distributions. Schema development is under way.

The LIFE team looks forward to increased use and further feedback, with the Web site’s latest tools online, continuing image uploads, and a new strategic plan to increase capabilities.

Photos from the NBII LIFE: (from top) Cactus (Sempervivum sp., Echeveria sp.) Cactus rosettes fill a garden bed. Photo by © 2008 Elizabeth A. Sellers; U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) hydrologist making a mini-piezometer measurement on the Yakima River to determine if ground-water discharge is occurring in this salmon rearing area. Photo by W. Simmonds; American bullfrog floats among lily pads (Rana catesbeiana). Photo by © 2008 Bruce Avera Hunter (Copyright held by Creator); Blue Ridge Parkway with fall foliage. Photo by Tanya Schoenhoff; Print and online publications using NBII LIFE images; A male scarlet tanager (Piranga olivacea) ready to be released after receiving a metal leg band applied by a wildlife biologist. Photo by © 2009 Elizabeth A. Sellers.

This is a revised version of the article published in the Winter 2010 (Vol. 13, No. 1) issue of the NBII Access Newsletter.