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

[Fields, Christopher J]

Regarding Zenodo, I agree this would be the best immediate solution to make sure there is at least one snapshot available to the community.  Data Dryad is also mentioned quite a bit for this purpose.

Long-term maintenance of any database is tricky, even for popular genome databases.  This is a much more specific target, so a museum or similar in the same or close geographic location seems like a good fit.

chris

On 5/7/18, 12:56 PM, "Bioperl-l on behalf of Peter Cock" <bioperl-l-bounces+cjfields=illinois.edu at mailman.open-bio.org on behalf of p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:

    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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