The Tree of Life Project: A Digital Library of Biodiversity Information

生命之树项目（ToL）是一个开放式的数据库驱动系统，通过互联网提供有关所有生物的生物多样性和生殖发育的信息。它包含了由研究人员贡献的最先进的内容，这些研究人员是特定生物群的专家，由来自20多个不同国家的350多名生物学家合作编写。ToL目前每周向大约50，000名访问者提供3，000多个含有科学内容的网页。该项目最初是作为生物学研究的工具而设计的，但随着K-16学生、科学教育工作者和公众的兴趣，该项目的范围已经扩大。其最初的目标是描述世界生物的特征及其系统发育关系，促进对生物多样性的认识，并鼓励和促进有关生物多样性和生物发生学的研究。ToL现在寻求收集更多针对不同非专业受众的材料。该项目旨在实现四个主要目标：1）提高ToL收集的核心科学内容，重点关注目前代表性不足的重要群体（原生生物，真菌，开花植物，昆虫和恐龙），包括模式生物和具有经济意义的生物;它们还包括地球上大多数已知物种。这些也是对K-16学习者特别有吸引力的群体。2）实施新的技术功能，重点关注教育和研究界用户的需求。这些功能的例子包括一个演示系统，允许访问者自定义网站内容的视图和工具，促进不同用户社区之间的合作项目。教育材料编目工具和教学元数据网关的实施将使该项目有可能与其他集合共享学习对象。3）启动专门针对K-16学习者的内容收集，包括练习，教案，媒体，教育游戏，新闻，4）制定和实施与任务授权的行政结构有关的强有力的政策（存档、编辑政策、同行评审、知识产权等）除了提供详细的专业内容外，ToL的一个显着优点是它将生命的进化树作为一个整体呈现。该项目的导航结构与进化历史的基本结构一一对应。在ToL中导航时，用户因此被灌输了所有生命的遗传联系的愿景，这是现代生物知识及其组织的基石。这种方法促进了对大规模模式的随意或系统的探索，鼓励K-16学习者和研究人员追踪树的分支上的特征分布，并思考可能塑造生物多样性的力量。该项目的架构，基于它列出的目录和描述的主题之间的联系，也使ToL学习技术接口的调查的理想工具。ToL在生物多样性研究界内外具有广泛的影响。面向社区的管理模式鼓励跨学科和国际合作，该项目旨在促进与其他项目分享内容和开放源码软件工具。此外，ToL为科学家提供了一个向公众传播研究成果的平台。在提供专家贡献的最高质量内容的同时，又以非专业人士可以访问的方式呈现，ToL还促进了更大的网络访问者社区的终身学习。拟议的项目通过以下方式显著增强ToL的影响：（1）在关键生物群中扩展其内容，（2）重建其架构，以添加专门为教育用户和残疾人设计的功能，以及（3）将其内容与其他教育资源整合，从而改善对我们多样化用户社区的服务。NSF生物科学理事会的环境生物学部门正在为该项目提供重要的共同资助，以表彰ToL在推进理事会教育目标方面发挥的作用。

The Tree of Life Project (ToL) is an open-access, database-driven system providing information over the Internet about biodiversity and phylogeny of all organisms. It contains state-of-the-art content contributed by researchers who are experts in particular groups of organisms, compiled collaboratively by more than 350 biologists from over 20 different countries. The ToL currently provides over 3000 web pages with scientific content to approximately 50,000 visitors per week. Originally designed as a tool for biological research, the project has widened its scope in response to interest shown from K-16 students, science educators, and the general public. Its initial goals were to describe the characteristics of the world's organisms and their phylogenetic relationships, to promote an appreciation for biodiversity, and to encourage and facilitate research about biodiversity and phylogeny. The ToL now seeks to collect more materials that are aimed at diverse, non-specialist audiences. This project aims to achieve four main goals:1) Improve core scientific content of the ToL collection, focusing on important groups (protists, fungi, flowering plants, insects, and dinosaurs) that are currently underrepresented and that include model organisms and organisms of economic significance; they also include the majority of known species on Earth. These are also groups of special appeal to K-16 learners.2) Implement new technical features focusing on needs of users from the education and research communities. Examples of such features include a presentation system that allows visitors to customize views of site content and tools that facilitate collaborative projects between different user communities. Implementation of Gateway to Educational Materials cataloguing tools and instructional metadata will make it possible for the project to share learning objects with other collections.3) Initiate collection of content specifically aimed at K-16 learners, including exercises, lesson plans, media, educational games, news items, and user-generated materials.4)Develop and implement robust policies pertaining to the administrative structure of the ToL (archiving, editorial policies, peer-review, intellectual property rights, etc.) As well as providing detailed, expert content, a notable merit of the ToL is its presentation of the evolutionary tree of life as an integrated whole. The navigational structure of the project is in one-to-one correspondence with the basic structure of evolutionary history. In navigating through the ToL, users are thus instilled with a vision of the genetic connectedness of all life, the cornerstone of modern biological knowledge and its organization. Facilitating the casual or systematic exploration of broad-scale patterns, this approach encourages both K-16 learners and researchers to trace the distribution of characteristics across the branches of the tree and to ponder the forces that may have shaped the observed diversity of living things. The architecture of the project, based upon the connections between the subjects it sets out to catalogue and describe, also makes the ToL an ideal tool for the investigation of learning technology interfaces. The ToL has broad impact within and beyond the biodiversity research community. A community-oriented administrative model encourages interdisciplinary and international collaborations, and the project is designed to facilitate the sharing of content and open-source software tools with other projects. In addition, the ToL provides scientists with a platform for the dissemination of research results to the general public. In providing the highest-quality content contributed by specialists, and yet presenting this in a way that is accessible to non-specialists, the ToL also facilitates life-long learning in the larger community of visitors to the web. The proposed project is significantly enhancing the impact of the ToL by (1) extending its content in key groups of organisms, (2) rebuilding its architecture to add features specifically designed for educational users and those with disabilities, and (3) integrating its content with other educational resources, thereby improving services for our diverse user communities. The Division of Environmental Biology in the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences is providing significant co-funding for this project in recognition of the role ToL is playing in advancing the educational goals of the Directorate.