The Encyclopedia of Life

The scientists behind the newly created Encyclopedia of Life are attempting to provide a comprehensive online database for every form of life on Earth. To meet such ambitious goals they are partially taking a Wikipedia approach, albeit among the scientific community. An early version of the encyclopedia went online today. Thanks to Henry for the tip:

"The researchers wanted to make the site useful to scientists and nonscientists, so they created a sliding button that readers can move to choose how much detail they want. They are also developing ways of manipulating the information to make it useful in many ways.

'You’ll be able to download a personalized field guide,' Dr. Edwards said. 'You can say, 'I’m going to go to this preserve in Thailand — what do we know about what might be there?''"

Continue reading here.

Sample page here.

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