Claire B. Blog 10: The Encyclopedia of Life

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an extensive project to organize and make available via the Internet "virtually all information about life present on Earth." At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species—that provide the entry points to a range of biodiversity information about that species, including taxonomy, geographic distribution, collections, genetics, evolutionary history, morphology, behavior, ecological relationships, and importance for human well being. The species sites provide lots of general information, but they also provide links to researcher data.

The EOL has only about 20 full-time employees - scientists and other professionals working from museums and research institutions around the world. The project currently has 20 full time employees, but it has over $12 million in grant money, technical partners who handle cataloging etc, and "technology partners" like Adobe and Microsoft that are building tools that the site incorporates.

Collection Principles

While this is not a typical digital library, it is a collection of visual and textual information about a specific subject, i.e. all living species on earth. It aims to gather, organize, and make accessible "all information about life present on earth." Pretty ambitious, but pretty well-done, I believe. All source information is linked, allowing viewers to explore in-depth (and also lending credibility to the site so it doesn't become a wikipedia-gone-
wild of animal fanatics or plant nuts).


Object Characteristics

Images are JPEGs, mostly photos but some drawings as well, and there is a sliding tool that allows viewers to see more or less detail on images. Each species has a map page behind its intro page that highlights areas of the world where the species is found, and the level of occurrence.


Metadata

Searching is available by subject or species. Users can browse through a text or graphical version of the species classification visible on every species or linking page, choosing which level of classification to browse. There is also a rotating assortment of images that appear on the home page.

It seems like the EOL forum is used pretty heavily as a searching tool as well, where people ask how to find a specific species as opposed to searching the site themselves. Pages that have minimal metadata requests that interested viewers contact them to become contributors (of text or images) or curators to help EOL seek out and display more information.

The current version is available in English, French, German, Russian, and Ukrainian, but EOL aims to expand to offer viewing in more languages. Users can bookmark pages, and a login offers saved searching and (maybe?) enhanced access. (Not sure - I didn't create an account)

Intended Audience

The site aims to be a primary research resource for a wide audience, including scientists, natural resource managers, conservationists, teachers, and students. Video tutorials on using the site and an extensive FAQ page make it much more navigable and less intimidating for the neophyte explorer, like myself. There are some interesting participatory features that expand the site's use and utility well beyond formal scientists, like and EOL Flickr group where people can upload images to be incorporated into species sites and a curator forum (the Curator Network idea is still under development, and raises interesting ideas about who is an expert and whose input is worthy).

EOL is very adamant about the project's potential impact on science (its ability to be a "macroscope for discerning patterns in large amounts of information" as well as a "microscope for zooming in on the small") and society. EOL is making digitally available millions of pages of biological information previously only available in texts in a limited number of institutions: "Now, no one will have to travel to these libraries to gain access to this information. The information found on EOL is free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." I'd be interested to hear how it's received across scientific communities...