Greetings from the Species Pages Group
Cyndy ParrI joined the Encyclopedia of Life a few weeks ago as the Director of the Species Pages Group. I’m based at the Smithsonian Institution, along with the EOL secretariat, but will be working regularly with the other four components of EOL: the Informatics group at Woods Hole, BioSynC at the Field Museum in Chicago, Education and Outreach at Harvard University, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library at many institutions.
That said, as the Director of the Species Pages Group, my primary companions will be the global scientific community. Our goal of 1.8 million species pages in ten years can only be met with intense, coordinated effort. We need to prioritize sharing of digital information already in databases, and target key areas where little information exists online. We need to enrich species pages with knowledge from specialists such as ecologists and physiologists, with observations from museum collections and citizen scientists, and with excellent images and video.
My group works with prospective data partners and will administer a new EOL Fellows program. We’ll be building a curatorial network that will help authenticate contributions from the general public.
How did I get here? My doctoral work in biology at University of Michigan was on the social behavior and communication of crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) and I’ve studied the evolution of magpies (Pica) using DNA sequence and behavior. For the past ten years I’ve worked on a variety of informatics projects. With the Animal Diversity Web I led the development of species pages by college students, negotiated licensing, and developed software for children observing diversity in their schoolyards. At the Human Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland we explored ways to visualize biological trees and food webs. More recently, at both University of Maryland at College Park and at Baltimore County, I’ve worked on semantic web and social technology for scientists (particularly moth and butterfly experts) and for citizens (ecoblogging). In my spare time, I’m a Flickr fan and a geocacher.
Discerning readers will note a trend. I resist narrow research bins and just want to find the best ways to build and share knowledge about biological diversity. That’s my passion, and that’s why I’m now with the Encyclopedia of Life.
As I work on the human connections that will build the content of the Encyclopedia of Life I welcome your ideas. You can leave them as comments here, or send me a message via the Contact Us form.
Many thanks to all of you who have already volunteered to help curate pages, and who are busy collecting information to contribute to species pages once our tools are ready. How many people do you think will ultimately be involved in the effort?