Operations Updates
ARM Climate Research Facility Operations Update - May 15, 2005
This bimonthly report provides a brief summary of significant accomplishments and activities in the operations area of the ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF).
Announcing: The GoogleBox
Users now have the power of Google at their disposal to search the www.arm.gov website.
Established in 1989, the ARM Program is the Department of Energy's largest global change research program. Eight national laboratories and numerous government agencies, universities, private companies, and foreign organizations contribute to its science and infrastructure using a complex network of web servers. While this distribution successfully focuses each server on a specific area of the website, it also creates a frustrating problem; the inability to search all the servers at the same time using a standard search tool. After identifying the need for a more robust search engine, ACRF web development staff happily report that the www.arm.gov search engine is now being powered by the industry leader, GoogleTM. Google was chosen because it's easy to use, indexes PDF files, and best of all, it can index multiple servers!
With the welcome addition of Google via google.arm.gov, users can now see query results from all the website servers, including the Data Archive and the External Data Center. In addition, specialized collections from the site are available from the drop down list to the right of the Google search field by changing from the "All Documents" selection. More collections will be added in the near future. This improvement, part of an ongoing site redesign, should greatly enhance usability of this expansive website.
Alaskan Students and Teachers Treated to Demonstration of New Kiosk Archive
A biology class at Barrow High School follows along as their teacher checks out the North Slope of Alaska DVD archive.
As an extension of the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) Climate Change: Science and Traditional Knowledge kiosk developed by ACRF Education and Outreach staff, a DVD archive of related interviews is now available to students, teachers, and the community of Barrow, Alaska. The interactive kiosk—in place at the Iñupiat Heritage Center (IHC) in Barrow since October 2003—is a tool to help the public learn about climate change from both scientific and indigenous perspectives. Footage from the filming process for the kiosk was integrated into an archive of 305 video clips from 28 interviewees. Designed to run on a personal computer, users can search the archive for video clips by an interviewee's name or a topic of interest.
In early May, the NSA site manager and ACRF Education and Outreach staff presented the archive to the IHC, providing information about ARM's role at the NSA, why the kiosk was created, and a short demonstration of the archive. The presentations took place while students from both Anchorage and Barrow visited the IHC as part of an exchange program offered through Barrow High School. This presented ACRF with a unique opportunity to reach Anchorage students and teachers, an audience not specifically targeted by outreach efforts at the NSA. Following the formal presentation, students and teachers at both the IHC and Barrow High School received information packets containing additional climate education materials and a copy of the DVD archive.
The IHC was a collaborator on the kiosk project by facilitating discussions between ACRF Education and Outreach and community elders, leaders, educators, and students. Because not all the interviews taken during the filming process could be included in the kiosk, the Climate Change: Science and Traditional Knowledge Archive was developed to make the valuable information easily accessible to teachers, students, and the public. The archive is an excellent resource for teaching basic climate concepts as well as history, cultural studies, and social studies.
