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LTER Site Byte
LTER Site: Palmer Station
Contributor: Karen Baker (Oct 22, 2006)
Site Byte:
The PAL information management effort is developing within a broader Ocean Informatics environment that includes the CCE LTER marine site co located with the PAL information management component at UCSD/Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Technical, organizational, social, and individual infrastructure needs are addressed together in order to support the PAL community and interfaces with the LTER Network.
A new remote mount technology was established for manuscript, presentation, and file sharing. Our informatics design studio capacity was updated with a system able to support multi-user chat sessions and with processor speeds more effective for CPU intensive applications such as google earth. Local efforts are ongoing in preparation for Open Directory LDAP services, an approach intended to enable secure and versatile information exchange. In the interim, local authentication/authorization conventions have been developed as collaborative needs arise for accessibility and security. Community tools developed include JPGraph for web plotting, Matlab for data analysis, and WordPress for blog and web page editing.
The local database design was expanded into a dual component model influenced by identifying, discussing, and gathering of long-term data for the Trends project. Attribute naming conventions are in development providing a framework for dictionaries that ultimately will support interoperability. The PAL web site (http://ccelter.sio.ucsd.edu) was updated for meetings of the site review committee in November 2005 where ice precluded the ship carrying site reviewers from reaching Palmer station and in May 2006. The site bibliography content was updated and electronic copies of manuscripts made available either publicly or to the site. In addition, the bibliography module was refactored to include script delivery for an LNO harvester and to conform with the recently updated LTER Network requirements. An Ocean Informatics web site (http://oceaninformatics.ucsd.edu) is being developed into a cross-project web portal. Design issues have been explored (Design Interfaces; Design Patterns; http://intranet.lternet.edu/archives/documents/Newsletters/DataBits/06spring/#2gr) and techniques used to develop a hybrid model incorporating elements of global navigation as well asll hub-spoke design. Cross-project work (CCE, CalCOFI, Ocean Observing System, and NOAA Fisheries) is prompting development of meta level context and stimulates development of best practices.
Collaborative local activities included joint design sessions focusing on eventlogs, and dictionaries. This work was part of a proposal written to frame and support cross-project infrastructure work. Work with the LTER Network included participation on the LTER Governance Committee. Where new text was drafted that develops more fully the role of information management. Participation on the network Web Recommendations Committee provided an opportunity to foreground the SiteDB network module.
KBaker became a UCSD Science Studies affiliate (http://sciencestudies.ucsd.edu/) with synergies developing along side previous LTER ethnographic studies focusing on articulation work and data stewardship. A team of five Ocean Informatics participants for PAL & CCE submitted posters (Palmer LTER: Designing a Queriable Community Data System; Research in Infrastructure Studies: Social and Organizational Perspectives on Ecological Data Management) and attended the 2006 All Scientists Meeting.
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