The Encyclopedia of Life is more than just a website - it is an infrastructure and an ecosystem of projects that strive to provide tools and services to scientist and the general public on the management, indexing, organization, and dissemenation of biological information.

Besides the EOL website, there are other tools and services available, such as:

1. LifeDesk - LifeDesks are dynamic web environments based on the Drupal content management system that make the online management and sharing of biodiversity research easier than ever. Through them, you can shape the EOL by contributing to the ongoing effort to document the world's species.


2. Global Names Index (GNI) - The Global Names Index is the first component of a semantic environment for biology called the Global Names Architecture GNA). GNI has been developed by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Encyclopedia of Life. GNI was developed because of the central importance of the names of organisms in the management of data about organisms. Many initiatives world-wide have been compiling and validating scientific names. They sit at the core of the management of information in most biodiversity web-sites and web-accessible databases. GNI is a response to foster the dynamic interactions among these initiatives. GNI itself is a fairly simple list of names, with reference to who holds the names, and links back to the sources of the names. It is the first module of GNA. New modules that appear will add nomenclatural authority and information to some of the names. Other services might, for example, return the correct versions of names that are submitted.


3. The Biology of Aging - This project, based at the Marine Biological Lab (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA, aims to put knowledge and issues surrounding aging and lifespan in front of a world-wide audience ranging from school children to expert scientists. The project collaborates closely with the Biodiversity Informatics Group of the Encyclopedia of Life, also based at the MBL.


4. NameLink - NameLink is a beta-level service offered by EOL that allows you to submit a webpage address and have the taxon names within the page automatically identified and linked up to projects which have information about those names. Developers can easily embed this functionality within their own webpages and applications.


5. Identify the Image - This is not really a tool or a service, but is an example of the types of educational activities that can overlayed on top of the core EOL infrastructure. Try and guess which image goes with which species name.