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As described in the Spring 2013 issue of Databits, infusions of funding from the ARRA award to the LTER Network (Chamblee, 2013a) plus an NSF SI2 grant to Tony Fountain and colleagues (Gries, 2013) allowed us to make quantum leaps in both the functionality and usability of the GCE Data Toolbox for MATLAB software in 2012-2013. Accompanying funding for user training and support also allowed us to introduce more potential users to this software, and to work directly with new and existing users to take full advantage of this tool (Chamblee, 2013a; Henshaw and Gries, 2013; Peterson, 2013). This intensive work on the toolbox not only resulted in major improvements to the software, but allowed us to develop critical user support resources (https://gce-svn.marsci.uga.edu/trac/GCE_Toolbox/wiki/Support) and establish an email list and Wiki pages to encourage ongoing peer support and collaboration. This process also provided the necessary momentum to remove remaining GCE-specific code from the main distribution and open the Subversion repository to public access, completing a 12-year transition from the toolbox being a proprietary GCE-LTER software tool to an open source community software package.

Sheldon, W.M. Jr., Chamblee, J.F. and Cary, R. 2013. Automating Data Harvests with the GCE Data Toolbox. In: LTER Databits - Information Management Newsletter of the Long Term Ecological Research Network: Fall 2013. LTER Network, Albuquerque, NM.