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Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a free, online collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.8 million living species known to science. It is compiled from existing databases and from contributions by experts and non-experts throughout the world. It aims to build one “infinitely expandable” page for each species, including video, sound, images, graphics, as well as text.[4] In addition, the Encyclopedia will incorporate the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which will contain the digitized print collections from the world’s major natural history libraries. The project is initially backed by a US$50 million funding commitment, led by the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Foundation.

The EOL went live on 26 February 2008 with 30,000 entries. The site immediately proved to be extremely popular, and temporarily had to revert to demonstration pages for two days when it was overrun by traffic from over 11 million views it received.

At this time, the project’s steering committee has senior officers from Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium, Field Museum, Harvard University, MacArthur Foundation, Marine Biological Laboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Sloan Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Information about many species is already available from a variety of sources, in particular about the megafauna. Gathering currently available data on all 1.8 million species will take about 10 years. The initiative will rely on established efforts, including the Sp2000 and ITIS Catalogue of Life, Fishbase and the Assembling Tree of Life project of NSF. The initial focus will be on animals and plants, then later fungi and microbes, and finally extinct species. As the discovery of new species is expected to continue at a rapid rate, in particular on the micro scales such as bacteria and viruses, the encyclopedia will grow continuously.

The goal of EOL is to be a tool for students, scientists and the public, and will eventually become multi-lingual. The estimated cost is US$110.5 million.

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