Encyclopedia of Life
March 5, 2008 by Peggy
Knowing more means loving more. And loving more is good for the earth, right? But where can you go to get reliable info on the abundant bunch of plant and animal species on earth?
Right now, there’s not one single place, but Encyclopedia of Life is trying to change that.
Encyclopedia of Life is now available online as a work in progress. BBC’s article, First look at vast ‘book of life’, gives more details about this cooperative undertaking.
If all goes according to plan, the site will feature 1.8 million species of plants and wildlife by 2017.
The site is designed to be used by everyone, including scientists or students. And they are looking for help.
You can take a survey, volunteer to become a curator for a species page, provide content or become a donor. Right now, the site has around 25 exemplar species pages which have been authenticated by scientists and thousands of other pages that are also authenticated, but lack the broad array of facts found on the exemplar pages.
So, go on and read about the Death Cap Mushroom. You know you want to. Then, check out the Black-and-Yellow Argiope (Warning to Jennifer, this is a spider!).
What an awesome, AWESOME idea. I’m so glad I got a few minutes to check up on all my favorite blogs (this one included
) to see what I’ve missed the past few days.
Thank you for sharing! I’m about to go check it out now.
Hey Denise. I’m glad you came by too!
I think EOL is going to be a great resource.