About
Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.
This blog will describe the encyclopedia, will showcase our landmark achievements, and will discuss the challenges we face. Posts are separated into the five main components to The Encyclopedia of Life as well as one category containing general posts:
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Mission: Deepen the Encyclopedia by efficiently and economically making openly available on-line the content of existing libraries.
Biodiversity Informatics
Mission: For the Encyclopedia, provide the software to establish a single port to reach information on all 1.8 million known species scattered in diverse websites all over the world.
Biodiversity Synthesis Group
Mission: Demonstrate and enlarge the Encyclopedia’s promotion of scientific discovery about biodiversity, conservation, and evolution of life that would have been impossible without the Encyclopedia.
Education and Outreach
Mission: Exploit the Encyclopedia’s potential by exploring and promoting its educational uses.
Species Sites
Mission: Develop species sites and entry-level species pages for all 1.8 million named species.
Comments are open to the public. We love to receive your feedback!