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:
- EOL API - The EOL Application Programing Interface (API) was developed to help facilitate the sharing of biodiversity data. The API is now available as a General Release, after undergoing two phases of beta testing. The API documentation is available here.
- 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.
- Education LifeDesks (Beta) provide an environment for undergraduate biology courses to create and manage species pages that can be published to the Encyclopedia of Life. The Education LifeDesk environment provides content management tools that enable instructors to setup groups and manage content evaluation, assignments, and group members. To learn more about how LifeDesks have been used in undergraduate biology classes click here.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Field Guides let you see species information based on a particular location. This new tool will provide an opportunity for groups and individuals to create customized lists or views of species information based on content from EOL and other sources. While these are still under development, you can check out some examples of what we are creating here.
