In mid-May, leaders from some of the top academic and scientific organizations in the world gathered together in Washington, D.C., to announce an unprecedented global initiative. Representing many producers and users of information, participants launched an effort to create the Web-based Encyclopedia of Life —something the scientific and environmental communities have reportedly sought for decades. The epic-sized effort will attempt to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth —and provide not just written information but, when available, photographs, video, sound, location maps, and other multimedia information for each species.
A project this mammoth will be time-consuming —it’s estimated that it will take 10 years to create Internet pages for all those currently named species plus any new ones to be discovered. Some prestigious organizations are already involved, including the initiators of the project: The Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Funding for the effort came from a $10 million grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The renowned scientist Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University articulated the idea for the Encyclopedia of Life in a widely read essay published in 2003. Wilson’s letter about the encyclopedia in late 2005 to the MacArthur Foundation started the ball rolling. Then, in March 2007, Wilson gave an address at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Conference, in which he wished for the establishment of the Encyclopedia of Life....
“The Encyclopedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time,” said James Edwards, current executive secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, who 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.”
The BHL, a consortium of 10 of the world’s largest natural history libraries, holds most of the relevant scientific literature. It will scan and digitize tens of millions of pages of the scientific literature that will offer open access to detailed knowledge. In fact, the BHL...has [already] scanned the first 1.25 million pages for the encyclopedia....
The organizers hope to have actual, authenticated species pages available by mid-2008.
The pages will be adjustable to various categories of users—from novice to expert....
Ultimately, the encyclopedia will be available in all major languages....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/02/2007 03:17:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
