Welcome to the WebERA Project Blog!

The WebERA Project Blog is a central location for communication between IPI, the WebERA Research Partner group, and Zak Software.

General discussion about the project will be ongoing, with focused discussion on feature topics introduced approximately every two months. The IPI Team will post feature topics based on the current Myclimatedata site on a regular schedule over the next twelve months. The early topics do not require you to have a lot of data to view and compare, since your PEM2 loggers only recently started collecting data. Please experiment with the features within the topics and review them with your colleagues. In addition, please document the ease of use, information value, effectiveness, and potential appeal to a broad audience of collecting institutions. You may also note any potential time and cost savings to users. All of your thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

Please forward any technical support issues, which require an immediate response, directly to Patti at pafpph@rit.edu (or (585) 475-2843). Patti will make sure that someone will address your issues as soon as possible. Later, these technical issues will be categorized and posted under the Technical Support section on this blog. The Technical Support section can be used as a tool to discover solutions to issues that others or you might have.

We expect the review of feature topics to proceed as follows:

Feature Topic (May and June 2008)

Workshop Reflection & MyClimateData Setup

Our first feature topic for your review and comment is based on the work done at the initial two day WebERA workshops.

During each workshop, we presented and discussed the Workbook process, or the new user wizard, which guided you through the process of:

• Designing functional location names
• Defining consistent terms for the Location Tree hierarchy (site, building, floor, room)
• Developing a controlled vocabulary for certain data kinds – collection types, materials, and collection names
• Identifying and organizing data kinds and kind groupings
• Setting up and editing the information page for each location

We wanted to encourage a broad overview of all the collection storage and exhibition locations in your institution, which could be narrowed down to the most important locations to be monitored. At the conclusion of the first workshop, we felt that our emphasis on this was misguided and potentially confusing and overwhelming for new users – yet, it still has value. The second workshop benefited greatly from our less-than-ideal presentation of these topics the first time around. However, we felt that even though the presentation went smoother than the first workshop, the process could still be improved. We are interested in your thoughts and comments about your experience during the workshop as well as your suggestions for improving the presentation.