3/1/2021 Encyclopedia of Life - Wikipedia

Encyclopedia of Life
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a free, online collaborative
encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living Encyclopedia of Life
species known to science. It is compiled from existing databases and
from contributions by experts and non-experts throughout the
world.[1] It aims to build one "infinitely expandable" page for each
species, including video, sound, images, graphics, as well as text.[2]
In addition, the Encyclopedia incorporates content from the
Biodiversity Heritage Library, which digitizes millions of pages of Type of site Encyclopedia
printed literature from the world's major natural history libraries.
Available in 19 languages
The project was initially backed by a US$50 million funding
commitment, led by the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Malay
Foundation, who provided US$20 million and US$5 million, German
respectively. The additional US$25 million came from five English
cornerstone institutions—the Field Museum, Harvard University, Spanish
the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Missouri Botanical Garden, French
and the Smithsonian Institution. The project was initially led by Jim Galician
Edwards[3] and the development team by David Patterson. Today, Dutch
participating institutions and individual donors continue to support
Norsk bokmal
EOL through financial contributions.
Occitan
Brazilian
Portuguese
Contents Swedish
Tagalog
Overview
Macedonian
Intention
Serbian
Resources and collaborations Arabic
See also Chinese(simplified

References and traditional)

Korean
External links
Turkish

Created by Field Museum

Overview Harvard University
MacArthur
EOL went live on 26 February 2008 with 30,000 entries.[4] The site Foundation
immediately proved to be extremely popular, and temporarily had to Marine Biological
revert to demonstration pages for two days when over 11 million Laboratory
views of it were requested. Missouri Botanical
The site relaunched on 5 September 2011 with a redesigned interface Garden
and tools. The new version – referred to as EOLv2 – was developed Sloan Foundation
in response to requests from the general public, citizen scientists, Smithsonian
educators and professional biologists for a site that was more Institution
engaging, accessible and personal. EOLv2 is redesigned to enhance URL eol.org (https://eol.

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usability and encourage contributions and interactions among users. org)

It is also internationalized with interfaces provided for English, Commercial No
German, Spanish, French, Galician, Serbian, Macedonian, Arabic,
Chinese, Korean and Ukrainian language speakers. On 16 January Registration Optional
2014, EOL launched TraitBank, a searchable, open digital repository Launched February 26, 2008
for organism traits, measurements, interactions and other facts for
Current status Active
all taxa.[5]

The initiative's Executive Committee includes senior officers from the Atlas of Living Australia, the
Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, CONABIO, Field Museum,
Harvard University, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Library of Alexandria), MacArthur Foundation,
Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Sloan Foundation, and the Smithsonian
Institution.[6]

Intention
Information about many species is already available from a variety of sources, in particular about the
megafauna. Gathering currently available data on all 1.9 million species will take about 10 years.[7] As of
September 2011, 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 the Sp2000 and ITIS Catalogue of Life, Fishbase and the
Assembling Tree of Life project of NSF, AmphibiaWeb, Mushroom explorer, microscope, 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. As
taxonomy 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 and
viruses.

EOL's goal is to serve as a resource for the general public, enthusiastic amateurs, educators, students
and professional scientists from around the world.[1]

Resources and collaborations

The Encyclopedia of Life has content partners around the world who share information through the EOL
platform, including Wikipedia and Flickr.

Its interface is translated at translatewiki.net.

See also
All Species Foundation
Biodiversity Heritage Library
List of online encyclopedias
Wikispecies

References
1. "EOL History" (http://eol.org/info/the_history_of_eol). Eol.org. 2012-02-28. Retrieved 2012-03-23.

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2. Odling-Smee, Lucy. "Encyclopedia of Life launched" (http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070508/full/0

70508-7.html). Retrieved 2007-05-09.
3. "James Edwards - Encyclopedia of Life" (https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-edwards-6472754/).
Eol.org. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
4. Zimmer, Carl (2008-02-26). "The Encyclopedia of Life, No Bookshelf Required" (https://www.nytimes.
com/2008/02/26/science/26ency.html). The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-27.
5. "TraitBank: Practical semantics for organism attribute data" (http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/con
tent/traitbank-practical-semantics-organism-attribute-data). Semantic-web-journal.net. 2014-03-28.
Retrieved 2015-11-21.
6. "Scientists compile 'book of life' " (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6638017.stm). BBC News.
2007-05-09. Retrieved 2007-05-09.
7. "Encyclopédie de la vie: Une arche de Noé virtuelle!" (http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Science
-Sante/2007/05/09/001-encyclopedie-vie.shtml?ref=rss). Radio-Canada. 9 May 2007. Retrieved
2009-05-12.

External links
Official website (https://eol.org)
"A Leap for All Life: World's Leading Scientists Announce Creation of Encyclopedia of Life" (http://ww
w.eol.org/info/press_releases). Encyclopedia of Life. 2007-05-09.
The Encyclopedia of Life – Introductory video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NwfGA4cxJQ) on
YouTube from May 2007.

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