EOL biotracker briefing

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