[Wikimedia-l] OT / Fwd: [STS-L] FINAL TERMINATION OF THE NBII on September 30, 2012

[phoebe ayers]

At this late date, collaborating with/supporting the Archive (who's
already picked up a lot of it) or similar would probably be the most
efficient solution. If it wasn't clear below, a lot of this particular
project involved pointing out towards other sources hosted elsewhere,
(which may or may not still be online) as well as hosting some data
locally; not sure how we'd help preserve that curation value.

-- phoebe

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> That is certainly appropriate. We should consider how we could help. Could
> someone with government contacts find out what that would entail and what
> their primary maintenance expenses were?
> On Sep 20, 2012 4:24 PM, "George Herbert" <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Query - would making this on-topic for the Foundation be appropriate?
>>
>> I.e., is the Foundation perhaps hosting and curating these apps and
>> data a reasonable project for us to take on?  Even if it took some
>> time to return some of the apps to usable, bringing over the data sets
>> and software to an archival location and offering to host turning it
>> back on again if the prior researchers or another subject matter
>> expert stepped up to help with that seems possible.
>>
>>
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 1:01 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > (off-topic for Wikimedia, on-topic for access to knowledge in general)
>> >
>> > The below news is sad, but not unusual, and increasingly common as
>> > government budgets shrink. The NBII was a multi-year effort to
>> > collect, curate and make accessible sources of biological data,
>> > especially about the US. The site is archived here, among other
>> > places; I don't know what happened to the data files that were hosted.
>> >
>> http://wayback.archive-it.org/2361/20120105233212/http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt/community/nbii_home/236
>> >
>> > Mostly, I think this is a reminder that what we do vis a vis
>> > advocating for free licenses, reusable data, distributed curation etc.
>> > is *important*. It's a safeguard against failure that's hard to
>> > imagine in the short-term but almost inevitable in the long-term
>> > (though in the world of knowledge projects, Wikimedia may --
>> > ironically and surprisingly enough! -- end up being one of the most
>> > resilient long-term platforms).
>> >
>> > -- phoebe
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> > From: "Frederick Stoss" <fstoss at buffalo.edu>
>> > ....
>> >
>> > Please pass this on to other library associations and their
>> > appropriate science and environmental units, especially SLA.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > You may recall the modest clamor late last year with the shuttering of
>> > the Website of the National Biological Information Infrastructure
>> > (NBII) within the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which was terminated
>> > on October 1, 2011, as a result of a Federal budget cut and
>> > re-organization within the USGS. The final elimination of the NBII
>> > Website takes place at the end of this month. Here is the official
>> > wording about the termination of this once important and richly
>> > populated data resource on the flora and fauna of the United States,
>> > and detailed inventories of resources, services, publications and
>> > tools related to biodiversity, ecology and related aspects of the US
>> > biomes:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > “In the President's budget for Fiscal Year 2012, the National
>> > Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), a program under the U.S.
>> > Geological Survey’s Biological Information Management and Delivery
>> > Program, was terminated. As a result, the funding that facilitated the
>> > NBII Node partnerships, as well as the development and maintenance of
>> > databases, applications and systems, is no longer available. On
>> > January 15, 2012, all NBII websites/applications with an *.nbii.gov
>> > URL were removed from the internet.
>> >
>> > “This website currently provides the latest information on
>> > communications with partners, the disposition status of NBII Web
>> > sites, data and applications, and general FAQs related to the NBII
>> > Program’s termination. The NBII Program close-out will be complete on
>> > September 30, 2012, and the www.nbii.gov URL will be turned off on
>> > that date. The termination information provided here will be made
>> > available on the USGS FAQ site after September 30, 2012.”
>> >
>> > Note those last two sentences:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > “ The NBII Program close-out will be complete on September 30, 2012,
>> > and the www.nbii.gov URL will be turned off on that date. The
>> > termination information provided here will be made available on the
>> > USGS FAQ site after September 30, 2012.”
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -george william herbert
>> george.herbert at gmail.com
>>
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