Last week we witnessed the birth of a fantastic project called The Encyclopedia of Life.

By Pandia Guest Writer Lars VÃ¥ge

Within 10 years the web site EOL is to have a unique web page for every known animal or plant on the planet.

Behind this initiative we find the Smithsonian Institute, Harvard University, Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History and several other American organizations.

There are even a few British institutions involved, including the Natural History Museum and the Royal Botanical Gardens. More are expected to follow.

The biologist and project leader James Edwards says in a press release that: “The Encyclopedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time”.

I believe this will be a very useful tool for — for instance — educational purposes.

EOL may also become an important political tool.

If there is clear and easily understandable information on endangered species and their environment online, that may lead to a stronger public pressure on governments and companies with activities that threaten the environment.

Each species will get its own web page containing text, maps, images, sound files and video, to the extent such information is available.

EOL will be based on scientific information and a large number of scientists world wide will contribute.The site will function as a kind of moderated wiki, and anyone will be allowed to participate.

But how do you fund a project like this?

Encyclopedia of Life has succeeded in getting funding from two wealthy American foundations:
the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. The first has contributed 10 million US dollars, the other one 2.5 million.

The work on scanning and adding important publications and data started as early as January 2006, but thanks to the generous contribution the tempo has been increased. The scanning is done by a consortium called the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which consists of the ten of the largest libraries for botany and natural history in the US and the UK.

So when can we expect to find accessible content on the site? According to the project FAQ they will publish web pages on various species in 2008, but it may take as many as 10 years to finalize the plan.

There are already demo pages available and they look promising. See for instance the page on the polar bear or the presentation of the newly discovered yeti crab.

There is also an information video available at YouTube.

Note also ARKive, a text and media database and search service covering endagered species. The people working on ARKive will now participate in the development of The Encyclopedia of Life.

See also Techcrunch: Encyclopedia of Life: Better Than Wikipedia?

This article was originally published in Internetbrus, a Swedish blog on search engines and Internet searching that has been online since early 2001. It is written for both searchers and educators.

Internetbrus is owned and edited by Lars Våge and Lars Iselid. Lars Våge works as a librarian at Mitthögskolan and a programmer for JL Informationsteknik. Lars Iselid is a librarian at the Umeå University Library, freelance journalist for the computer magazine Datormagazin. He can be found blogging under the pseudonym Cyrille at Iaslash.org.

Lars and Lars are co-authors of a book on Internet research: Informationssökning på Internet.