Hi Ian, Thanks for your thoughts! Part of the difficulty of providing database+webhosting is indeed the potential variation in platforms that people may come to us with and ask that we host it (and maybe even actively support in case of problems).
From a support perspective I guess the easy road would be that we are involved before anything has been built and can choose the technology platform. Data independence would be something we aim for, so that it's easy to store and preserve the data in a repository for the long(er) term. (DataCite does not actually provide a data repository, but I get your point. Did you mean Dataverse?) Separating data from the application would need to come from storing the data outside the application so that it can be accessed and managed without the application if necessary. I have looked at Docker before and I agree it could be useful for distribution of code. Some researchers do use it for their code distribution, although I believe this is more often an analysis tool than a website. I am unsure that our IT department would agree to host containers at all, even if we did it on behalf of researchers. If there is any security issue in the code, I don't think the fact that it runs in a container helps a lot beyond limiting access to the host system – data in linked containers or external databases could still be accessed and potentially damaged through the code. Thanks for helping me get my thoughts clear. Ben On 02-09-16 23:42, "Code for Libraries on behalf of Ian Mulvany" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote: I don't currently reside in the library world, but this is a similar kind of question that a publisher might face when asked to support specific interactive additional material from a researcher. First up, from the point of view of preservation, my advice would be to see if it is possible separate the data from the application, and then see if the data, as a standalone thing, can be deposited somewhere like zenodo, Datacite, figsahre or somewhere similar. You are usually good up to 10gigs of data. For the application/site there is no easy answer. It's very dependent on what it is, is it a CMS, a roll your own, a microservice, a thin JavaScript single page app. My thinking is heading towards looking at containers to make these kinds of artefacts distributable and reproducible, but that often requires as much specialist knowledge to get working as to get the app itself working. - Ian > On 2 Sep 2016, at 16:47, Companjen, B.A. <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > > I'm probably thinking about this too hard, but perhaps someone can shed a different light on this so here goes :) > > We are investigating if and how me and my colleagues at the university library's Centre for Digital Scholarship, in cooperation with central IT, should support researchers who want to present and possibly collaborate on their research data on the web. In the past researchers received little to no support and resorted to SharePoint (with support, but limited possibilities) or setting up a website on a department server, paying an external developer or putting a PhD student in charge. Some chose to use another institution's project website, others may have used a home server. > > I'm looking for examples of (university) libraries that provide support for hosting websites centered around data(bases), hoping to get answers for questions like: > > · how do you collaborate with researcher and IT? > > o do you help build websites or just guide the researcher through the IT department's offers? > > o do you collaborate closely with IT to provide this service? > > · do you offer managed websites in which the researcher has some degree of freedom to do anything she wants? > > o e.g. offer webhosting with a control panel like DirectAdmin/cPanel/… access and 'package manager' like Installatron/Scriptalicious? > > o e.g. offer a small range of software packages like WordPress, Omeka, MediaWiki, … and database management like phpMyAdmin or phpPgAdmin? > > · what kind of support would you offer for researchers' existing custom built websites and/or databases if the owner wants to transfer control to the library? > > Of course there won't be a single simple solution for all situations. For database hosting with a web UI we looked at the Online Research Database Service<http://ords.ox.ac.uk/index.xml>, but the University of Oxford are phasing out the service and will stop supporting the (open source) software. We are building an Islandora repository for various library collections and in some cases it might serve as virtual research environment too, but it isn't a natural fit for e.g. actively used relational data. > > Thanks for your help! > > Ben > > Ben Companjen > Digital Scholarship Librarian > Centre for Digital Scholarship, UBL > Universiteit Leiden > > Witte Singel 26/27, kamer 025 > Postbus 9500 > 2300 RA Leiden > > Telefoon +31 71 527 88 58 > E-mail [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> > https://twitter.com/bencomp >
