Anyone who's ever had to sit through the "Wikipedia is not a reliable source" rant knows the frustrations of unreliable information on the internet. Enter the Encyclopedia of Earth (EoE): A new online reference guide to "the Earth, its natural environments and their interactions with society." The entries were written by over 1,000 experts from 60 countries and compiled and content-controlled by an editing staff at Boston University.
"People need to be able to find sources of information on the internet they know they can trust," says Cynthia Barakatt, the EoE's director of content development. "The EoE is a great, reliable source of information on environmental topics that is available to anyone. Our goal is to make environmental information about the Earth and its ecosystems accessible, both in terms of the ability to get to it for free through the internet and to present the information in a way people can understand and use."
The EoE takes material from original peer-reviewed articles (by organizations that allow the EoE to publish their work) and "free and open content sources," such as various government agencies' publications. These sources are edited for length and style, and then added to the site. Currently, there are over 3,500 articles.
Information in the EoE is grouped by topics, ranging from minerals and mining to coral reefs to new energy technologies. Barakatt says that the climate change section is especially comprehensive. "We have many articles and have developed a special collection on the topic, although there are still some areas where we could use more entries, such as the impacts of climate change on oceans and the specifics of how climate change modeling works," she says.
The Encyclopedia is a "wiki," an online community of collaborators who update information, but its editors are quick to point out that it's very different from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is public; anyone can edit any topic, regardless of his or her credentials. The EoE controls its content by using a restricted wiki, and only experts recognized by the program can make changes or additions. The website also includes a section of free ebooks, including Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
The EoE is online at eoearth.org.