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Kicking off a new NSF-supported project at University of Maryland called Biotracker. This show introduces Encyclopedia of Life to the students who will be creating games, a community, and computer vision tools for mobile phone-based identification of species.
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Cynthia ParrSpecies Pages Group
Biotracker Briefing24 Aug 2010
Aims today
EOL backgroundHow EOL worksStatusThemes and Regional EOLsFellowsWorking with EOL
Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth.
-Edward O. Wilson
http://www.eol.org• All species known to science• Freely accessible: open
access, open source• Available from a single portal
in a common format• Quality• Constantly growing• Aimed at multiple audiences
Catalogue of Life
IUCN
GBIF
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Content providersDatabasesLifeDesksPublic contribution
CURATORS
COMMENTERSTAGGERS
Typical species page
Objects can come from many partnersObjects are sorted by topicEach partner gets credit
Maps from global museum and observation data
Links to digital literature
Curation, Comments, Tags
Not
Not
Not Wikipedia
Statistics
• 2.4 million pages• Over 45 content partners providing 1.7 million
data objects on 400,000 taxon pages• 330,000 pages with vetted objects• 430 curators/1000s contributors/~43,000
members
EOL’s content trajectory is promising
Species pages with a vetted object
Year
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 200
100000
200000
300000
400000
500000
600000
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Themes, e.g. Marine90% of 230,000 marine species by 2013
78,000 pages with content so far, about 1/3
Upcoming themes:Invasives? Beetles? Plants?
Regional EOLs
China
Australia
Dutch
South Africa
Central America
North America Pan-Arab
Norway
EOL Rubenstein Fellows program• Support ~15 early career scientists each year• Share content related to their research• Engage other scientists, help us do a better job
• 35% of current fellows and 53% of mentors are affiliated with the Smithsonian
• 3000 pages so far
Working with EOL: Organization
Steering committee Executive director
Scanning and Digitiza
tion
Species
Pages Group
Informatic
s
Learning and
Education
Synthesis
Center
Product
manager
Working with EOL:Roadmap discussionLaunch v.2 in June or July of next yearRevamped interfaceImproved interactionPersonasImproved APIs (see http://www.eol.org/api)
Cornerstone Institutions• The Biodiversity Heritage
Library• The Field Museum of
Natural History• The Missouri Botanical
Garden• The Marine Biological
Laboratory • Harvard University• The Smithsonian
Institution
• John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• Cornerstone Institutions• Grants• Private Donors
Invaluable support
