David J (Paddy) Patterson
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The Encyclopedia of LifePaddy at the MBLProtsvilleemail: dpatterson@mbl.edu |
The Encyclopedia of Life
On May 9th , the Encyclopedia of Life project was announced at the International Union of Biological Sciences jamboree in Washington. The goal of EOL is a web site for every species - within 10 years. This very large project is a communal endeavor and is co-ordinated by a growing collective of cornerstone institutions, currently comprised of Smithsonian Institution, Field Museum, Harvard University, Missouri Botanical Gardens, the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. Our own Professor Emeritus, Paddy Patterson, is heading up the team at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
Those of you with long memories will recollect Paddy's vision of this new e-landscape for biology in 2001 when he returned from his sabbatical at the MBL. Working with like-minded collaborators, and with substantial support from the MacArthur and Sloan foundations, the basis of EOL is beginning to be assembled. The MBL team has the responsibility of developing the biodiversity informatics infrastructure for this project. EOL will develop a taxonomically and semantically intelligent informatics infrastructure to draw together any aspects of the biology of any organism from any location accessible via the internet. Taxonomic intelligence brings together data about the same organism even if the information has been labeled with different names. The semantics will allow the content to be used beyond the original EOL context. The project will use Wiki and Web 2.0 style approaches to make the project scaleable by engaging the community. At the same time, EOL will involve experts to ensure that content is subject to peer review. One component of the infrastructure is a WorkBench, a dynamic yet virtual compilation of open source software modules that can be used to link, organize, annotate, manipulate, analyse or visualize the available data. Through this WorkBench, users will be able to deposit information for use in EOL pages, improve and enhance the underlying tools and architecture. EOL will incorporate the output of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (1.6 million biodiversity texts), will seek to integrate with the Barcode of Life, and to work collaboratively with the WoRMS project to promote the emergence of an 'Encyclopedia of Marine Life'.
The
project has grabbed the imagination of many other players, whetherthe big
companies like Microsoft or Google, other national initiatives (Atlas of Living
Australia), international agencies (GBIF), like-minded projects (Catalog of
Life, FishBase, Tree of Life), funding agencies, or individuals. The release
event led to 30,000 queries. There is a sense that the internet is now ready
for biology (it wasn't even a few years ago), that the funds, the informatics
devices, and the involvement of the community will ensure that this project
will scale up to meet its vision.
EOL
is very much a community world-wide initiative, designed with the flexibility
of meeting the needs of diverse categories of users. The EOL is designed
to be a process rather than a product so that it can be always-evolving.
EOL offers numerous options for both individuals and institutions (such as
SOBS). In the US, Harvard is mediating in the development of content and
services that will allow EOL to be used in the US University educational environment.
One obvious role for SOBS is a similar role within the Australian context.
EOL will provide a MySchoolyard environment, something that could easily
be refashioned to meet the needs of biodiversity courses run by The University
of Sydney. We will be seeking 'custodians' for clades of the underlying architecture
and to apply a critical eye to the classification scheme, and to content submitted
by non-experts.
Paddy should be around in late September and has offered to expound on what EOL has that Wikipedia doesn't have (the answer is: 'The EOL video').
