ORAL - Patterson

The Encyclopedia of Life will build a web site for every species. This very large project is a communal endeavor and is co-ordinated by a growing collective of cornerstone institutions, currently comprised of Smithsonian Institution, Field Museum, Harvard University, Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. EOL will apply a taxonomically and semantically intelligent informatics infrastructure to link selected aspects of the biology of any organism from any location accessible via the internet. Taxonomic intelligence brings together data about the same organism even if the information has been labeled with different names. The semantics will allow the content to be used beyond the EOL context. The project will use Wiki and Web 2.0 style approaches to engage the community, but at the same time will involve experts to ensure that content can be subject to peer review. One component of the infrastructure is a WorkBench, a dynamic yet virtual compilation of open source software modules that can be used to link, organize, annotate, manipulate, analyse or visualize the available data. Through this WorkBench, users will be able to deposit information for use in EOL pages, improve and enhance the underlying tools and architecture. EOL will incorporate the output of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, will seek to integrate with the Barcode of Life, and to work collaboratively with the WoRMS project to promote the emergence of an ‘Encyclopedia of Marine Life’.

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