Below is an article written by Dr. Lowman in newsobserver.com:
A biological inventory project, called the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL), was recently launched to catalog information about Earth’s 1.8million scientific species classified during the past several centuries. Currently, information on some species is only available piecemeal in different museums, collections, websites or roughly scribbled in the field notebooks of individual biologists. This first-ever global inventory will compile all facts about every species and make it available via computer. Thousands of taxonomists (scientists who classify and name organisms) are contributing information to create the first large-scale assessment of life on our planet (www.eol.org).