Encyclopedia of Life
Our knowledge of the many life-forms on Earth - of animals, plants, fungi, protists and bacteria - is scattered around the world in books, journals, databases, websites, specimen collections, and in the minds of people everywhere. Imagine what it would mean if this information could be gathered together and made available to everyone – anywhere – at a moment’s notice. This dream is becoming a reality through the Encyclopedia of Life.
Our Community:
We work with open access biodiversity knowledge providers around the world, including museums and libraries, universities and research centers, individual scientists, graduate students and citizen science communities, and a suite of international open data hubs. Everyone has a job to do. Scientists and other observers generate data, photos, videos and descriptive text. Bioinformaticists and technicians, professional and volunteer, digitize and organize this information. Publishers and data sharing platforms support sharing of the information through explicit licenses and data services. Integrators, like EOL, receive information from many sources, and format and annotate it so that search tools can find similar content from different sources. If you've published a biodiversity dataset or a wildlife photo online that is licensed for sharing, you are one of us.
