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Science Massive project launched to put life on Earth online
Science Massive project launched to put life on Earth online | Massive project launched to put life on Earth online |
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| Written by Stan Beer | |
| Wednesday, 09 May 2007 | |
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The Field Museum, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole), Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to initiate the project, bringing together species and software experts from across the world. The Missouri Botanical Garden has become a full partner, and discussions are taking place this week with leaders of the new Australian Government funded Atlas of Living Australia project. Over the next 10 years, the Encyclopedia of Life will create Internet pages for all 1.8 million species currently named, as well as attempting to classify and catalog millions of species yet to be discovered. The web site,at www.eol.org, will provide written information, as well as multimedia information including photographs, video, sound and location maps. The Encyclopedia will be a moderated wiki-style environment, freely available to all users everywhere, according to the project organizers. "The Encyclopedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time," said Dr James Edwards, currently Executive Secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility who today was officially named Executive Director of the Encyclopedia of Life. "Through collaboration, we all can increase our appreciation of the immense variety of life, the challenges to it, and ways to conserve biodiversity. The Encyclopedia of Life will ultimately make high-quality, well-organized information available on an unprecedented level. Even five years ago, we could not create such a resource, but advances in technology for searching, annotating, and visualizing information now permit us, indeed mandate us to build the Encyclopedia of Life."{moscomment}
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