[Summary]
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) was launched in May 2007 as a global
scientific effort to document all known species of animals and plants
(1.8 million), including endangered species, and expedite the millions
of species yet to be discovered and cataloged (6 to 8 million). The
encyclopedia's honorary chair is Edward Wilson, professor emeritus at
Harvard University, who, in an essay dated 2002, was the first to
express the wish for such an encyclopedia. Technology improvements made
it possible five years later with content aggregators, mash-up, wikis,
and large scale content management. The multimedia encyclopedia has
gathered texts, photos, maps, sound, and videos, with a webpage for
each species, to provide a single portal for millions of documents
scattered online and offline. The first pages were available in mid-
2008. The encyclopedia will be translated into other languages with the
help of partner organizations.
***
The Encyclopedia of Life was launched in May 2007 as a global
scientific effort to document all known species of animals and plants.
There are 1.8 million species, including endangered species, and
millions of species yet to be discovered and cataloged, probably 6 to 8
million.
This collaborative effort is led by several main institutions: Field
Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological
Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution,
Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).
The initial funding came from the MacArthur Foundation (US $10 million)
and the Sloan Foundation ($2.5 million). A $100 million funding over
ten years will be necessary before self-financing.
The encyclopedia's honorary chair is Edward Wilson, professor emeritus
at Harvard University, who, in an essay dated 2002, was the first to
express the wish for such an encyclopedia. Technology improvements made
it possible five years later, with content aggregators, mash-up, wikis,
and large scale content management.
Based on the work of thousands of experts around the globe, the
multimedia encyclopedia will gather texts, photos, maps, sound and
videos, with a webpage for each species. It will provide a single
portal for millions of documents scattered online and offline. As a
teaching and learning tool for a better understanding of our planet,
the encyclopedia will reach everyone: researchers, teachers, students,
pupils, media, policy makers, and the general public, who will be able
to contribute in a wiki-style environment, with contributions checked
by experts.
As a consortium of the ten largest life science libraries, with other
libraries to join in the future, the Biodiversity Heritage Library
(BHL) started the digitization of 2 million documents from public
domain spanning over 200 years. In May 2007, when the project was
officially launched, 1.25 million pages were already digitized in
London, Boston and Washington D.C., and available in the Internet
Archive.
The first pages of the encyclopedia were designed in 2007, and
available in mid-2008. The encyclopedia should be fully "operational"
in 2012 and completed with all known species in 2017. People will be
able to use the encyclopedia as a "macroscope" to identify major trends
from a considerable stock of information -- in the same way they use a
microscope for the study of detail. The English version will be
translated in several languages by partner organizations.