Background The ABLE (Automatic Biodiversity Literature Enhancement) project aims to

enhance access to collections of scanned documents from the taxonomic literature. The older literature, dating from 15th century, can inform management practices in modern concerns, especially biodiversity loss, land-use patterns, sustainability and climate change. Therefore, unlike most other sciences, taxonomic research and usage require access to the full range and history of publications on the subject. Biological taxonomy is the discipline that manages the names of living and fossil organisms, defining the relationships within and between them. It therefore provides the central infrastructure for information management in the biological sciences [1]. Publication through peer-reviewed journals is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the 1930s, scientific observations appeared in a wide variety of publications, including learned societies (e.g. Proceedings of the Royal Society), Institutional annual reports (e.g. Verhandlungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins in Hamburg) and encyclopaedias (e.g. Bronn’s Klassen und Ordnungen des Their-Reichs). Many of these publications are only held in a few libraries and are difficult to access. The difficulty of accessing taxonomic information is a severe impediment to research an