[Bioperl-l] Biology database looking for a new home

[Peter Cock]

The missing URL for the project: https://nativeplants.evergreen.ca/

Quoting the message:

> The Native Plant Database is retiring on May 31st
>
> 15 years ago, Evergreen launched the Native Plant Database
> as a tool to support our work in urban greenspace stewardship
> and restoration across Canada. In the years since, our focus
> as an organization has evolved and unfortunately we are
> unable to dedicate the necessary resources to maintain the
> Database in good order. After much deliberation, we have
> decided that it is necessary to decommission the Native Plant
> Database, effective May 31st, 2018.
>
> After this date, the Database website will be taken offline. If
> you have registered an account, your personal information
> will be deleted from our server, including all saved plant lists.
> If you would like to save your lists or any plant information,
> please do so by printing it prior to May 31st.
>
> If possible, it is our hope to transfer the Database to another
> organization who will continue to expand the work and
> contributions from Database visitors. If you work for an
> organization that would be interested in taking on this
> responsibility, please contact Lisa Ditschun at
> lditschun at evergreen.ca.
>
> Thank you for your interest, contributions and support of
> our Native Plant Database.

End quote.

I would suggest depositing a long term read only export at
Zenodo (http://about.zenodo.org/) for long term archiving
backed by CERN.

However, hosting for an ongoing live copy of the database
is less straightforward. I don't think think this is something
BioPerl or the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) would
take on, but there is a chance one of our members may have
a good idea - perhaps a botanical garden or natural history
museum?

Peter
(OBF board member, but speaking here in a personal
capacity)

On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 4:34 PM, Gordon Haverland
<ghaverla at materialisations.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I've been a long time user of Perl.  I had heard of BioPerl a long time
> ago, never looked into things beyond that.
>
> I have a problem with deer on my farm, and so I am building up a
> database on things which deer might not want to eat.  In doing so, and
> research the edibility of red elderberries, I happened across the
> Native Plants database at Evergreen.ca.  There was a message there,
> that they are shutting down the database at the end of the month (May
> 2018), and they would like to find a new home for the data.
>
> I have a fair amount of disk space, so I sent them a note.  Their reply
> was that they would prefer that some organization take it over, not
> just someone with a few TB of disk space.  :-)
>
> I mentioned CPAN and BioPerl in my reply to them.  I thought I should
> "advertise" this here as well.
>
> Gord
>
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