MBL develops infrastructure and portal for Encyclopedia of Life

The MBL has played a major role in developing the Encyclopedia of Life, which was officially launched in the spring of 2007. The EOL Biodiversity Informatics Group, based at the MBL and led by David J. Patterson, created the software for the EOL Web portal, which goes live today with the first species pages (www.eol.org). Each species page is an aggregation, or “mash-up,” of text, images, video, scientific data, and other information drawn from many different sources, and all vetted by scientific experts.

“With the launch of the first 30,000 species pages, we have proven the capacity to reach out to lots of different people and sources, draw out their information on species, and rebuild it as EOL pages that have great flexibility to suit different users,” says Dr. Patterson. “And users can be assured it is accurate, reliable information. Now that we have done this with 30,000 species, we can do it for the 1.8 million known species on Earth.”

The Marine Biological Laboratory-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Library (MBLWHOI Library) is also an important player through its leadership role in the EOL Scanning and Digitization Group. To date, this group has scanned more than 2.5 million pages of text and images on species which provide fully searchable content to the EOL. The group plans to scan 1 million volumes of biodiversity literature in the next five years, and also provide RSS feeds for relevant scientific journals to the EOL.

“For the first time in history, the core of our natural history and herbaria library collections is being made available to a truly global audience,” says Cathy Norton, director of the MBLWHOI Library and deputy director of the Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, which operates the EOL scanning group. “Ninety-five percent of the world’s species are in developing countries in South America and Africa that have not had access to this literature. This will bring information about species to the very people who live where the species do!”

As of today, EOL’s infrastructure includes placeholder pages for 1 million species, of which 30,000 have been populated with detailed information derived from comprehensive, authoritative compilations available for some taxonomic groups (e.g., FishBase, AmphibiaWeb). In addition, about two dozen highly developed multimedia pages are presented as examples of what to expect in time throughout the EOL. Three of these multimedia pages were developed by scientists at the MBL, who are experts on the species described by the page: the microbe Cafeteria roenbergensis (page developed by Dr. Patterson); the bacteria Wolbachia pipientis (by Seth Bordenstein); and the Australian Giant Cuttlefish (by Roger Hanlon and Kendra Buresch).

Feedback on the first 30,000 pages will shape the ultimate design and functionality of all 1.8 million pages, scheduled for completion by 2017. It will also help inform priorities for content development.