TheEncyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a free, online encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 millionlivingspecies known toscience. It aggregates content to form "pages" for every known species. Content is compiled from existing trusteddatabases which are curated byexperts and it calls on the assistance of non-experts throughout the world.[1][2] It includesvideo,sound,images,graphics, information on characteristics, as well as text.[3] In addition, the Encyclopedia incorporates species-related content from theBiodiversity Heritage Library, which digitizes millions of pages of printed literature from the world's majornatural historylibraries. The BHL digital content is indexed with the names of organisms using taxonomic indexing software developed by the Global Names project. The EOL project was initially backed by a US$50 million funding commitment, led by theMacArthur Foundation and theSloan Foundation, who provided US$20 million and US$5 million, respectively. The additional US$25 million came from five cornerstone institutions—theField Museum,Harvard University, theMarine Biological Laboratory, theMissouri Botanical Garden, and theSmithsonian Institution. The project was initially led by Jim Edwards[4] and the development team byDavid Patterson. Today, participating institutions and individual donors continue to support EOL through financial contributions.[citation needed]
EOL went live on 26 February 2008 with 30,000 entries.[5] The site immediately proved to be extremely popular, and temporarily had to revert to demonstration pages for two days when over 11 million views of it were requested.
The site relaunched on 5 September 2011 with a redesigned interface and tools. The new version – referred to asEOLv2 – was developed in response to requests from the general public,citizen scientists, educators andprofessional biologists for a site that was more engaging, accessible and personal. EOLv2 is redesigned to enhance usability and encourage contributions and interactions among users. It is also internationalized with interfaces provided forEnglish,German,Spanish,French,Galician,Serbian,Macedonian,Arabic,Chinese,Korean andUkrainian language speakers. On 16 January 2014,EOL launched TraitBank, a searchable, open digital repository for organism traits, measurements, interactions and other facts for all taxa.[6]
Information about many species is already available from a variety of sources, in particular about themegafauna. Gathering currently available data on all 1.9 million species will take about 10 years.[8] As of September 2011[update], EOL had information on more than 700,000 species available, along with more than 600,000 photos and millions of pages of scanned literature. The initiative relies on indexing information compiled by other efforts, including theSpecies 2000 andITIS,Catalogue of Life,Fishbase andthe Assembling Tree of Life project ofNSF,AmphibiaWeb,Mushroom explorer, micro*scope, etc. The initial focus has been on living species but will later include extinct species. As the discovery of new species is expected to continue (currently at about 20,000 per year), the encyclopedia will continue to grow. Astaxonomy finds new ways to include species discovered by molecular techniques, the rate of new additions will increase, particularly in respect to the microbial work of(eu)bacteria,archaebacteria andviruses.[citation needed] EOL's goal is to serve as a resource for thegeneral public, enthusiasticamateurs,educators,students and professionalscientists from around the world.[2]
The Encyclopedia of Life is an aggregative environment, that collects data from other on-line data sources. It provides full provenance forinformation through citations from its trusted databases. Professionalresearchers publishingacademic research should cite directly to the underlyingdata.[9] Users may not currently edit EOL's entries directly but may register for the site to join specialist expert communities to discuss relevant information, questions, possible corrections, sources, and potential updates, contribute images and sound, or volunteer for technical support services.[10] Its interface is translated attranslatewiki.net.[clarification needed]
EOL was made distinctive by its incorporation of 'taxonomic intelligence',[11][12] a growing array of algorithms that sought to emulate the practices of taxonomists. These tools included names resolution so that data entered into different databases using different names for organisms could be combined. Components of hierarchical classifications systems could be used to drill-down or to expand data searches. Common components of different classification schemes were used to allow users to navigate using multiple classifications and to meander among schemes. This initiative overcame a major problem of many biological data bases,[13] that of having rigid and singular classification structures that were unable to reflect the diversity of views, or evolving concepts of how names of species and other taxa should be interpreted. The names management systems continue to be developed by the Global Names project.
