We are pleased to announce that the open development period of the new SABR Encyclopedia has started. All members are now invited to contribute to the Encyclopedia and contribute to its mission of becoming an essential reference on professional and collegiate baseball, which brings together SABR research and other resources in one convenient portal.

Screenshot of a page from the SABR Encyclopedia - Grady Sizemore

 You will need your SABR ID and password to log in. If you don't know your ID, which starts with your last name and ends with a number, the login page of the Encyclopedia offers a link where you can request an email with your ID and password.

As it stands today, the Encyclopedia offers basic information on people, teams, and leagues from several SABR resources, including the Baseball Index, BioProject, the SABR Journals archive, as well as the minor league statistics project and the records of the Collegiate Committee.

What is present today is just a framework and foundation for the larger vision of the Encyclopedia. The next step is a community effort; a chance for the SABR membership to help define what a "definitive" reference and resource on baseball should contain. This might include adding photos and narrative text for historical players and teams, whether from research you've already done, or research you've always wanted to do, but never quite got around to it.

The main page of the Encyclopedia offers a number of links to help you get started making your first contributions. Here are some quick links that can get you started from here:

• SABR Baseball Encyclopedia – Main Page
• Grady Sizemore – Example page
• Introductory screencast – video on logging in and what the Encyclopedia offers
• Editing screencast – video on editing players' pages

For the moment, only SABR members have access to the Encyclopedia. In the spring, probably close to Opening Day, we plan to make this resource available to everyone. So these next few months will be the time when we hope SABR members will step up and contribute their knowledge and expertise, to make the Encyclopedia as strong as possible.

Starting with this post, this site will host regular updates on progress in the Encyclopedia, new projects, and ideas for research in the Encyclopedia. Check back every few weeks by either bookmarking the SABR Encyclopedia Updates page, or subscribing to the RSS Feed.

If you have ever wanted to contribute to research projects, but were intimidated by having to make a large up-front investment of time and effort, working on the Encyclopedia may be exactly the project you've been looking for. The editing process is not difficult to learn, and there is no end to what we can do.

One example of a project that will make the Encyclopedia a better resource is writing short narratives about people. You can learn more about the task at the help page for writing about people.

Another example, although it is a bit more technical, is uploading pictures.

As we develop documentation for more tasks, we will add posts here with information on how to get involved in those particular projects.

If you have questions, the Encyclopedia support group can be reached by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .