The world's scientists plan to put descriptions, pictures, videos and sounds of all of the Earth's 1.8 million known species on one Web site, open to everyone, U.S. media reported on Wednesday.

The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will standardize the presentation of "information about the plants and animals and microorganisms that share this planet with us," said James Edwards, the project's executive director.

Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading scientific institutions and universities. The project will take about 10 years to complete.

It appears they will begin by scraping the web for information, then checking the material they gather for accuracy and copyright issues. Then that material will become the basis of the encyclopedia entry.

If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 83,200 km long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.