Alexandria – Egypt: Bibliotheca Alexandrina hosted on its premises the EOL Executive Committee Fall Meeting from 10 – 11 October. The meeting brings together senior figures from the cornerstone institutions, regional, national and thematic EOLs and other major financial or in-kind partners.
Subsequent to the EOLv2 launch last month, the committee has a busy agenda this fall, paving the way for long-term sustainability of EOL. With the new interactive platform, the system has shown positive impact on different users levels starting with school students to biodiversity professionals. The committee discussed the lessons learned and the technical requirements in the light of the after-launch experience and ways to exploit and support EOLv2.
The Library of Alexandria has taken significant part in the process of internationalizing EOL in the sense of re-creating the system in a multilingual format and is currently fostering the creation of EOL in Arabic.
At the Library of Alexandria, the EOL executive committee members had the opportunity to meet with the Arab Biodiversity Committee of the EOL in Arabic project, where both committee members had the chance to mingle and to bridge their work.
“We are regarding EOLv2 as gateway for involving the community in science and fostering the notion of exploring the relations between the different species on the planet”, commented Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, “Through working on the EOL in Arabic project here at the Library of Alexandria we open this gateway for Arabic speakers, simultaneously allowing Arab scientists to add to the EOL content with either species from the Arab region or add to the content already existing on EOL.”