Encyclopedia of Life Review

The Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org) made its debut February 26, 2008 and was so popular that the site crashed within hours. The site logged more than 11.5 million viewers in the first 5 1/2 hours. Encyclopedia of Life organizers had to seek help from Wikipedia in order to get their web site back up and running.

The Encyclopedia of Life made its debut with a limited amount of web pages documenting 30,000 species, but already have pages set up for 1 million species. Eol.org intends to quickly fill in the 1 million pages and continue until all of the 1.8 million species known to the scientific world are documented on their ever-evolving site. According to site info, the Encyclopedia of Life believes that there is no other database with information that is as extensive as this site will be.

The goals of eol.org are lofty and include "transforming the science of biology; inspiring a new generation of scientists; engaging a wide audience of schoolchildren, educators, and citizen scientists; and increasing the collective understanding of life on earth.

The Encyclopedia of Life staff includes scientists and non-scientists who work with museums and research institutions from around the world. Notables who were instrumental in the conception and organization of eol.org include Chris Thompson from the Smithsonian Institution and Daniel Janzen from the University of Pennsylvania and INBio, Costa Rico. An informational video on eol.org states that the Encyclopedia of Life was the dream of E.O. Wilson of Harvard University. There are plans for the site to accept information from anyone-similar to the Wikipedia site. However, the curators of each species will approve each submission before inclusion.