Tree of Life Web Project: Brief Overview
The goals of the EOL extensively overlap the goals that the Tree of Life Web Project (ToL) has had since 1995. For a proposed collaboration, see Tree of Life Web Project/Encyclopedia of Life.
The Tree of Life Web Project is a digital library of biodiversity information compiled collaboratively by hundreds of specialist and amateur contributors. Its goal is to contain a page with pictures, text, and other information for every species and for each group of organisms. Connections between web pages follow phylogenetic branching patterns between groups of organisms
| Scientific Materials (Core Content) | Learning Materials | Media | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Content | Branch pages (supraspecific taxa) and leaf pages (individual species or subspecies). | Treehouses designed for a lay audience: investigations, stories, fun & games, art & culture, teacher resources, web quests, etc. | Images, videos, audio files, presentations, animations, downloadable documents, etc. | |
| Examples |
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| Contributors | Professional scientists | Professional scientists, teachers, students, science enthusiasts | ||
Branch
Pages:
Leaf
Pages:
Content Management & Information Architecture
- Custom tools for contributors allow editing of:
- tree structure
- branch, leaf, and treehouse pages
- media file information
- metadata
- Content is stored in a database
- Web pages are created dynamically
Node-based design: text sections, taxon names, images and other media are treated as objects that are attached to individual branching points in the phylogenetic hierarchy.
- phylogenetically structured queries
- customized views of the data
- data sharing with other projects (see mockup of a page that features content imported from other collections)