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Online Encyclopedia Will Include Every Living Organism

by Tim Stevens on February 27, 2008 at 12:24 PM

Work on Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Life Begins

About 20 years ago, the encyclopedia was undoubtedly the go-to place for information. It had plenty of drawbacks, though, among them size, cost, and lack of options. These days, there are dozens of encyclopedias, with the online and free Wikipedia getting much of the attention. However, despite each of them having a ridiculous number of entries, you wouldn't say that they cover everything there is to know about a given topic. That is exactly what a new encyclopedia lead by Massachusetts' famous Woods Hole Laboratory plans to offer: a comprehensive Encyclopedia of Life that will cover every living organism on our planet.

The EOL has gone live, and, with 30,000 entries completed thus-far, barely scratches the surface of what's out there. But with an impressive amount of funding, and support coming from diverse places like the Missouri Botanical Garden and Harvard University, it certainly has friends in the right places. It is anticipated that the encyclopedia will be complete with 1.8 million pages of information by 2017. The comes out to a page for every species that has thus-far been identified.

Again, the site is live now, but only a handful of those 30,000 entries are currently available. Look for more to go online in the coming months -- and years.

From TG Daily

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Tags: breaking+news, Encyclopedia of Life, EncyclopediaOfLife, EOL, top, Woods Hole, WoodsHole

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