University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

The BBC web site has an article entitled [Giant deep sea jellyfish
filmed in Gulf of
Mexico](http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8638000/8638527.stm)
which has footage of *Stygiomedusa gigantea*, and mentions an associated
fish, *Thalassobathia pelagica*.  
  

::: {style="text-align:center;"}
[![AE8B4B6F-CC98-405F-90FF-390262EBE3C0.jpg](http://lh5.ggpht.com/_Gct8lVAxKqQ/S9SnJTPva9I/AAAAAAAAAow/i6tmO8mZWGs/AE8B4B6F-CC98-405F-90FF-390262EBE3C0.jpg?imgmax=800){border="0"
width="400"
height="296"}](http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8638000/8638527.stm)
:::

  
  
One thing that frustrates me beyond belief is how hard it is to get more
information about these organisms. Put another way, the biodiversity
informatics community is missing a huge opportunity here. There are a
slew of services, such as [Zemanta](http://www.zemanta.com/) and
[OpenCalais.com](http://www.opencalais.com/), that can enrich the
content of a document by identifying terms and adding links. Imagine a
similar service that took taxonomic names and could provide information
and links about that name, so that sites such as the BBC could enrich
their pages. We\'ve had various attempts at this^1^, but we are still
far from creating something genuinely useful.  
  
Part of the problem is that the plethora of taxonomic databases we have
are often of little use. After fussing with Google I discover that
*Stygiomedusa gigantea* (Browne, 1910) has the synonym *Stygiomedusa
fabulosa* Russell, 1959 (see, e.g., [the WoRMS
database](http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=135311)),
but no database tells me that the genus *Stygiomedusa* was published by
Russell in *Nature* in 1959
([doi:10.1038/1841527a0](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/1841527a0)). Nor can
I readily find the original reference for (Browne, 1910) in these
databases^2^. Why is this so hard?  
  
![9B0FFA09-AF7B-4F82-98F5-C5D7DF891C5F.jpg](http://lh3.ggpht.com/_Gct8lVAxKqQ/S9SrLThduqI/AAAAAAAAAo0/HL0jQqO1Ctg/9B0FFA09-AF7B-4F82-98F5-C5D7DF891C5F.jpg?imgmax=800){border="0"
width="100" height="160" align="right"}Then when we do have information,
we fail to make it digestible. For example, the EOL page for
[*Thalassobathia pelagica*](http://eol.org/pages/223650) links to BHL
pages, but fails to point out that the pages it links belong to a single
article, and that this article (<http://biostor.org/reference/4339>) is
the original description of the fish.  
  
Publishers are increasingly interested in any tools that can embellish
their content. The organisation that gets their act together and
provides a decent service for publishers (including academic journals,
and news services such as the BBC) is going to own this space. Any
takers\...?  
  

Such as uBio [LinkIT](http://www.ubio.org/tools/linkit.php) and EOL
[NameLink](http://www.eol.org/content/page/namelink).

After finding another taxon with the author Browne 1910 in BHL, I found
*Diplulmaris (?) gigantea*, which looked like a good candidate for the
original name for the jellyfish, see
[http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1727009](http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/17270097).
This is confirmed by the Smithsonian\'s [Antarctic
Invertebrates](http://antiz.redmon.com/taxon_view.cfm?taxon=5852) site.


The BBC web site has an article entitled Giant deep sea jellyfish filmed in Gulf of Mexico which has footage of
<em>
 Stygiomedusa gigantea
</em>
, and mentions an associated fish,
<em>
 Thalassobathia pelagica
</em>
.    One thing that frustrates me beyond belief is how hard it is to get more information about these organisms. Put another way, the biodiversity informatics community is missing a huge opportunity here.

Time for some decent service

Last month EOL took the brave step of including Wikipedia content in its
pages. I say \"brave\" because early on EOL was pretty reluctant to
embrace Wikipedia on this scale (see the [report of the Informatics
Advisory Group](http://blog.eol.org/2008/05/01/iag-review-of-big/) that
I chaired back in 2008), and also because not all of EOL\'s curators
have been thrilled with this development. Partly to assuage their fears,
EOL displays Wikipedia-derived content on a yellow background to flag
its \"unreviewed\" status, such as this image of the python genus
*Leiopython*:  
  

::: {style="text-align:center;"}
![Leiopython.png](http://lh4.ggpht.com/_Gct8lVAxKqQ/S2gMpiNl0yI/AAAAAAAAAmg/wWRpeOMrb4w/Leiopython.png?imgmax=800){border="0"
width="400" height="226"}
:::

  
  
It\'s interesting to compare EOL\'s approach to Wikipedia with that
taken by the BBC, as documented in [Case Study: Use of Semantic Web
Technologies on the BBC Web
Sites](http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/BBC/). The BBC
makes extensive use of content from community-driven external sites such
as [MusicBrainz](http://musicbrainz.org/) and Wikipedia. They embed the
content in their own pages, stating where the content came from, but not
flagging it as any less meaningful or reliable than the BBC\'s own
content (i.e., no garish yellow background).  
  
Furthermore, the BBC does two clever things. Firstly:  

> To facilitate integration with the resources external to bbc.co.uk the
> music site reuses MusicBrainz URL slugs and Wildlife Finder Wikipedia
> URL slugs. This means that it is relatively straight forward to find
> equivalent concepts on Wikipedia/DBpedia and Wildlife Finder and,
> MusicBrainz and /music.

  
  
This means that if the identifier for the artist Bat for Lashes in
Musicbrainz is
<http://musicbrainz.org/artist/10000730-525f-4ed5-aaa8-92888f060f5f.html>,
the BBC reuse the \"slug\" **10000730-525f-4ed5-aaa8-92888f060f5f** and
create a page at
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/10000730-525f-4ed5-aaa8-92888f060f5f>.
Likewise, if the Wikipedia page for *Varanus komodoensis* is
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon>, then the BBC Wildlife
Finder page becomes
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/species/Komodo_dragon](http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/species/Komodo_dragon%22),
reusing the slug **Komodo_dragon**.  
  

::: {style="text-align:center;"}
![komodo.png](http://lh5.ggpht.com/_Gct8lVAxKqQ/S2gXe8m9aSI/AAAAAAAAAmo/ljPKNsv2JdM/komodo.png?imgmax=800){border="0"
width="400" height="264"}
:::

  
  
Reusing identifiers like this can greatly facilitate linking between
databases. I don\'t need to do a search, or approximate string matching,
I just reuse the slug. Note that this is a two-way thing, it is trivial
for Musicbrainz to create links to BBC information, and visa versa.
Reusing identifiers isn\'t new, other examples include Amazon.com\'s
ASIN (which for books are ISBNs), and BHL reuses uBio NameBankIDs \--
want literature that mentions the Komodo dragon? Use the uBio
[NameBankID
2546401](http://www.ubio.org/browser/details.php?namebankID=2546401) in
a BHL URL <http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/name/2546401>.  
  
The second clever thing the BBC does is treat the web as a content
management system:  
  

> BBC Music is underpinned by the Musicbrainz music database and
> Wikipedia, thereby linking out into the Web as well as improving links
> within the BBC site. BBC Music takes the approach that the Web itself
> is its content management system. Our editors directly contribute to
> Musicbrainz and Wikipedia, and BBC Music will show an aggregated view
> of this information, put in a BBC context.

  
  
Instead of separating BBC and Wikipedia content (and putting the later
in quarantine as does EOL), the BBC embraces Wikipedia, editing
Wikipedia content if they feel a page need improving. One advantage of
this approach is that it avoids the need for the BBC to replicate
Wikipedia, either in terms of content (the BBC doesn\'t need to write
its own descriptions of what an organism does) or services (the BBC
doesn\'t need to develop tools for people to edit the BBC pages, people
use Wikipedia\'s infrastructure for this). Wikipedia provides core text
and identifiers, BBC provides its own unique content and branding.  
  
EOL is trying something different, and perhaps more challenging (at
least to do it properly). Given that both EOL and Wikipedia offer text
about organisms, there is likely to be overlap (and possibly conflict)
between what EOL and Wikipedia say about the same taxon. Furthermore,
there will be duplication of information such as bibliographic
references. For example, the Wikipedia content included in the EOL page
for [*Leiopython*](http://www.eol.org/pages/83248) contains a
bibliography, which includes these references:  
  
Hubrecht AAW. 1879. Notes III on a new genus and species of Pythonidae
from Salawatti. *Notes from the Leyden Museum* 14-15.  
  
Boulenger GA. 1898. An account of the reptiles and batrachians collected
by Dr. L. Loria in British New Guinea. *Annali del Museo Civico de
Storia Naturale di Genova* (2) 18:694-710  
  
The genus name *Leiopython* was published by Hubrecht (1879), and
Boulenger (1898) is cited in support of a claim that a distribution
record is erroneous. Hence, these look like useful papers to read.
Neither reference on the Wikipedia page is linked to an online version
of the article, but both have been scanned by EOL\'s partner BHL (you
can see the articles in BioStor
[here](http://biostor.org/reference/14777), and
[here](http://biostor.org/reference/14776), respectively)^1^.  
  
Problem is, you\'d be hard pressed to discover this from the EOL page.
The BHL results do list the journal *Notes from the Leyden Museum*, but
you\'d have to visit the links manually to discover whether they include
Hubrecht (1879) (they do, as well as various occurences of *Leiopython*
in the indices for the journal). In part this problem is a consequence
of [the crude way EOL handles bibliographies retrieved from
BHL](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/09/visualising-biodiversity-heritage.html),
but it\'s symptomatic of a broader problem. By simply mashing EOL and
Wikipedia content together, EOL is missing an opportunity to make both
itself and Wikipedia more useful. Surely it would be helpful to discover
what publications cited on Wikipedia pages are in BHL (or in the list of
references for hand-curated EOL pages)? This requires genuine
integration (for example by reusing existing bibliographic identifiers
such as DOIs, and tools such as OpenURL resolvers). If it fails to do
this, EOL will resemble crude pre-Web 2.0 mashups where people created
web pages that had content from external sites enclosed in

tags.  
  
The contrast between the approaches adopted by EOL and the BBC is pretty
stark. The BBC has devolved text content to external, community-driven
sites that it thinks will do a better job than the BBC could alone. EOL
is trying to integrate Wikipedia into it\'s own text content, but
without addressing the potentially massive duplication (and, indeed,
possible contradictions) that are likely to arise. Perhaps it\'s time
for EOL to be as brave as the BBC, as ask itself [whether it is sensible
for EOL to try and occupy the same space as
Wikipedia](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-wikipedia-and-eol.html).  
  

::: {style="font-size:10px;"}
1\. Note that the bibliographic details of both papers are wanting,
Hubrecht 1879 is in volume 1 of *Notes from the Leyden Museum*, and
*Annali del Museo Civico de Storia Naturale di Genova* series 2, volume
18 is also treated as volume 38.
:::

  


Last month EOL took the brave step of including Wikipedia content in its pages. I say "brave" because early on EOL was pretty reluctant to embrace Wikipedia on this scale (see the report of the Informatics Advisory Group that I chaired back in 2008), and also because not all of EOL's curators have been thrilled with this development.

EOL, the BBC, and Wikipedia

Some thoughts on the first release of the [Encyclopedia of
Life](http://www.eol.org). I am being deliberately critical. This is a
high profile project with tens of millions of dollars in funding, lots
of people involved, and is accompanied by some of the most overblown
hype in organismal biology. In a sense I think EOL has set itself up by
over promising and under delivering.  
  
Before continuing, I should point out that I am involved in EOL in an
advisory capacity, but not in actually making anything. Some of the
tools I\'ve blogged about have made there way into EOL, such as
[Pygmybrowse](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/10/pygmybrowse-revisited.html)
and reference parsing (see David Shorthouse\'s [excellent
work](http://ispiders.blogspot.com/2007/08/gimme-that-scientific-paper-part-iii.html)
on this).  
  
**Lack of content**  
I think the first release of EOL should have, at a minimum, provided at
least as much information that I can get from
[iSpecies](http://ispecies.org) and
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). Other projects,
such as [Freebase](http://www.freebase.com), have pre-populated their
databases with content from Wikipedia and other sources. Why didn\'t
EOL? If the argument is that they want authenticated content, then this
doesn\'t wash. Their authenticated content is minimal, and waiting for
authentication will, in my view, cripple EOL.  
  
**Exemplars are incomplete**  
The first release contains 25 exemplars. Pages for these taxa  

> \...show the kind of rich environment, with extensive information, to
> which all the species pages will eventually grow. The information on
> the exemplar pages has been authenticated (endorsed) by the scientists
> whose names are listed on these pages.

Well, I hope this isn\'t the standard EOL aspires to. The pages are
incomplete and not interlinked. One of the 25 chosen exemplars is
*Anolis carolinensis*. EOL lists its distribution as:  

> Widely-distributed throughout the southeastern United States: North
> Carolina to Key West, Florida, and west to southest Oklahoma and
> central Texas.

  
However, the GBIF map EOL displays shows lots of dots in Hawaii:  
  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSWON42LcyYMaIA6HvaH2N_9cKYNivk8cJnFiHg70F7tdqIRnxXM7RBpzUjG59qhfDqjFgX4kaYOmoB6US2yWb881jHm3YgDFMl3pXv1vbncMBpFPYr8pqU_h6AhhQ9GfglrRF/s320/draw.pl.png){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171338706800824850
style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSWON42LcyYMaIA6HvaH2N_9cKYNivk8cJnFiHg70F7tdqIRnxXM7RBpzUjG59qhfDqjFgX4kaYOmoB6US2yWb881jHm3YgDFMl3pXv1vbncMBpFPYr8pqU_h6AhhQ9GfglrRF/s1600-h/draw.pl.png){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}  
The EOL account is silent on this interesting distribution pattern. It
will come as no suprise that the [Wikipedia
account](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Anole) of the same
species tells us that it has been introduced into Hawaii. Wikipedia 1,
EOL 0.  
  
**Links**  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiIS6ywUhyphenhyphenMb-1ud4UixVuaqiqaSaR43juINdxyA-o3R5gvlgbCOPeIYKkjI6ZjbpiafZG-VVjwWkzn8HtliEMn1pXrUXAITPxc869qM1lzQtdEDL6vr5c97NHga_iKVLSmPDQ/s200/LocalImage.jpeg){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171347322505220658
style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiIS6ywUhyphenhyphenMb-1ud4UixVuaqiqaSaR43juINdxyA-o3R5gvlgbCOPeIYKkjI6ZjbpiafZG-VVjwWkzn8HtliEMn1pXrUXAITPxc869qM1lzQtdEDL6vr5c97NHga_iKVLSmPDQ/s1600-h/LocalImage.jpeg){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}  
If two pages talk about species that are ecologically associated, then
surely those pages should be linked? Among the exemplars is *Pissodes
strobi*, the white pine weevil. In the EOL account, among the hosts
listed is *Pinus strobus*, another exemplar taxon. The accounts of these
two taxa **are not linked**. No hyperlink, nothing. The reader has no
idea that there is an exemplar account for *Pinus strobus*. Furthermore,
when reading the account for *Pinus strobus* there is no indication that
it is host to the white pine weevil.  
Surely the point of having all this information in one place is so that
it can be linked together?  
  
**BHL**  
EOL also exposes some limitations of the [Biodiversity heritage
Library](http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/). Consider the exemplar
page for *Pinus strobus* L. The \"L.\" indicates that this species was
described by Linnaeus. Among the many references listed by BHL, none are
by Linnaeus. What gives?  
  
Well, the [IPNI
record](http://www.ipni.org:80/ipni/idPlantNameSearch.do?id=263339-1&back_page=%2Fipni%2FeditSimplePlantNameSearch.do%3Ffind_wholeName%3DPinus%2Bstrobus%26output_format%3Dnormal)
reveals that this species was described on p. 1001 of *Species
Plantarum*. BHL has digitised *Species Plantarum*, and [page
1001](http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/359007) has *Pinus
strobus*:  
  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRDeekLWSoXeurJbONJtafbMMQz5bn-x4WgTWB0y5UVCdQb8fNhV7WYtdwegAKQ5qV9NBJL8HbL9qbrUgq3YU8C6ko-PCRcQjpjEeOS3qeX9vgprhFtMYYNLdpoGzfiNLv8n6/s320/strobus.jpg){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171353103531201090
style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRDeekLWSoXeurJbONJtafbMMQz5bn-x4WgTWB0y5UVCdQb8fNhV7WYtdwegAKQ5qV9NBJL8HbL9qbrUgq3YU8C6ko-PCRcQjpjEeOS3qeX9vgprhFtMYYNLdpoGzfiNLv8n6/s1600-h/strobus.jpg){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}  
  
Now, BHL relies on uBio\'s tools to extract names, and Linnaeus didn\'t
make this easy (the specific epithet *strobus* is in the right hand
margin, separate from *Pinus*), but one would have thought that for the
exemplar taxa an effort would have been made to link Linnaean names to
BHL content \-- what better place to showcase the link between a name
and its publication? It\'s quite easy to do, given that
[IPNI](http://www.ipni.org) has page numbers for plant names. Just map
page numbers to BHL URLs, and you\'re done.  
  
**Inconsistency**  
Going down the taxonomic hierarchy weird things happen. When viewing the
plant genus *Morus* if I can see a picture of *Morus nigra* (presumably
this is \"authenticated\" content). If I drill down to the species
*Morus nigra*, I\'m told there is no authenticated content for this
species. Either the image is *Morus nigra* or it isn\'t. If it is, why
not show it, if it isn\'t, why claim that it is?  
  
  
  
**Logos**  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYAvReMxHErInnV38TkmSnbBlTx0EwHlddHMNbOouYUaRTApILdL-T8R34QQZ7BlXAqgqBCRpVbt9YBT4-cFztsGEGHM9gIdcdHYga9A-A64f7gh1HRQ1alNppG6wCP657rWx/s200/bhl_logo.gif){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171334948704440834
style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYAvReMxHErInnV38TkmSnbBlTx0EwHlddHMNbOouYUaRTApILdL-T8R34QQZ7BlXAqgqBCRpVbt9YBT4-cFztsGEGHM9gIdcdHYga9A-A64f7gh1HRQ1alNppG6wCP657rWx/s1600-h/bhl_logo.gif){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}  
Way too much space is devoted to logos of various contributors, BHL
being the worst offender (it doesn\'t help that the BHL content is
incomplete, lacking links for Linnaean names). **I don\'t care about
logos**. Contributors may care about getting their logos displayed, but
users couldn\'t care less. They get in the way. On some pages, there\'s
more screen space devoted to logos than information (e.g., the page for
[*Apomys datae*](http://www.eol.org/taxa/16985004)). This is, frankly,
ridiculous, and reflects a warped set of priorities.  
  
What\'s worse, all these logos are associated with links that take
people **away** from EOL. Hence EOL becomes little more than a
collection of web links to other sites.  
  
**Search**  
The search is based on the [Catalogue of
Life](http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2007/search.php),
and inherits the same problems. For example, if I search for \"Morus\" I
get a list in alphabetical order of taxonomic names that contain the
string \"morus\". The two names that are **an exact match** occur as
items three and four on the list \-- they should be first and second.  
  
It gets worse if I search on \"Tyrannosaurus rex\". EOL doesn\'t do
dinosaurs, and so doesn\'t contain anything on *T. rex*, but the search
results tell me that **The following 116 search results contain
\'Tyrannosaurus rex\'**. Nope, none of them do.  
  
The search engine is poorly done, it fails to rank results sensibly,
incorrectly reports what it does find, and has no support for spelling
mistakes.  
  
**Authenticated content**  
This is probably the thing that, if left as it is, will strangle EOL.
The insistence on \"authenticated (endorsed)\" content places a severe
brake on what EOL can offer.  
  
**It\'s a web site**  
EOL\'s web site has no mechanism for people to extract data (e.g., RSS
feeds, microformats, links to RDF, etc.). It\'s intended to be read by
humans, not machines. This greatly diminishes its utility.  
  
So, I\'ve got that off my chest. The first release was always going to
be a disappointment, especially given the hype. What frustrates me,
however, is just how far the first release is from what it could have
been.  
  
The real question is how much the issues I\'ve raised are things which
are easy to fix given time, or whether they reflect underlying problems
with the way the project is conceived.


Some thoughts on the first release of the Encyclopedia of Life. I am being deliberately critical. This is a high profile project with tens of millions of dollars in funding, lots of people involved, and is accompanied by some of the most overblown hype in organismal biology. In a sense I think EOL has set itself up by over promising and under delivering.

Encyclopedia of Life - first impressions

The first release of the [Encyclopedia of Life](http://www.eol.org/) is
officially live today. I have promised to be very good\...  
  
[![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIJlhzCYS0lDQKWC2W3pg2IIkggogJQyk4XXiejxisb5nc0dHpPXrdhLDfhYC2C_FEstazc1NB11Sf0wRjgu2F_cCIT12w9eqWd6-2eATVgKenWRtf192e_vpQME1PK42m40JR/s320/anolis_speciespage.png){#BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171272568599433714
style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
border="0"}](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIJlhzCYS0lDQKWC2W3pg2IIkggogJQyk4XXiejxisb5nc0dHpPXrdhLDfhYC2C_FEstazc1NB11Sf0wRjgu2F_cCIT12w9eqWd6-2eATVgKenWRtf192e_vpQME1PK42m40JR/s1600-h/anolis_speciespage.png){onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"}


The first release of the Encyclopedia of Life is officially live today. I have promised to be very good...

EOL live

  
The [Encyclopedia of Life](http://eol.org) web site is up, together with
some rather breathless publicity and this cool movie. Of course, it\'s
all vapourware just now. I\'m involved in some of the informatics in an
advisory role. It will be interesting to see what happens. Let\'s hope
that the fate of EoL will be different to that of the similarly
ambitious [All Species](http://all-species.org). Oh, and then there\'s
[SpeciesBase](http://speciesbase.org)\...  
  
For some reaction see
[Slashdot](http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/08/226230).


The Encyclopedia of Life web site is up, together with some rather breathless publicity and this cool movie. Of course, it's all vapourware just now. I'm involved in some of the informatics in an advisory role. It will be interesting to see what happens. Let's hope that the fate of EoL will be different to that of the similarly ambitious All Species. Oh, and then there's SpeciesBase...  For some reaction see Slashdot.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Time for some decent service

EOL, the BBC, and Wikipedia

Encyclopedia of Life - first impressions

EOL live

Encyclopedia of Life Launch