2012 Web Discussion
- The following is the agenda of work posted under business for canSAS-2012 under the Web Portal topic. Please add comments here:
- define scope, purpose, and goal of portal
- list content type to which such a portal should give access.
- Suggest method for hosting
- ?more distributed or more centralized,
- ?under auspices of a particular facility or SAS commission
- ? .. or both etc)
- Build a working straw landing page prototype
- Build at least 2 or 3 subpages and/or designs on paper
- plan for presentations
- SAS 2012
- SAS commission
There are a number of places on the www with information about small-angle scattering. A portal needs to provide links to relevant information and extra content. The working group needs to find a way to make information readily available in an attractive way for different categories of people that will include scientists curious about the technique but unfamiliar, potential users, experienced users, etc. Some current pages are:
Software for small angle scattering
World Directory of SANS Instruments
BioSAXS data analysis software (EMBL Hamburg)
Wikipedia Small-angle Scattering
SAS Toolbox from LBL - mostly software and on-line calculators
Manfred Kriechbaums's page on small-angle scattering
These pages are examples of what is already available. The challenge is to provide access and to integrate information.
ARR: A challenge is to find a means to keep the portal maintained and updated. We will need some continuing
commitment to this task.
SMK: If you type 'small angle scattering' into Google - what I suspect most people would do in the first instance
if looking for information on the topic - you get a Wikipedia article (which then subdivides into further
articles on SANS & SAXS). Do we know who wrote these articles?
ARR: I agree that people will find readily the Wikipedia articles. I suppose that the 'portal for the
community' should aim to provide further information (some that is not considered suitable for Wikipedia
articles). These topics might include links to software descriptions, lists of conferences, access
to mailing list archives, etc.
SMK: Yes, I agree. I think I was thinking more in terms of 'a portal to the portal'!?
SMK: On a different point, I have been in contact with the IUCr Webmaster. IUCr Commissions, such as the
CSAS, have two sets of pages on the IUCr servers: an "official" page at
http://www.iucr.org/iucr/commissions/small-angle-scattering maintained directly by the IUCr Executive
Secretary, and their own pages, http://www.iucr.org/resources/commissions/small-angle-scattering
maintained directly by the Commission (which has effective autonomy over the content although technically
is subject to scrutiny by the IUCr Executive Committee). Content for the latter is managed using the
web-based package Squiz Matrix (http://manuals.matrix.squizsuite.net/). Authorship rights to the
CSAS's pages are currently vested in the CSAS Chairman. However the IUCr is currently trialing co-existing,
'lightweight', satellite websites (see, for example, http://blogs.iucr.net/) based on Wordpress. Content
on these satellite sites could be promoted as "in association with the SAS Commission". The caveat is that
this is a very new departure, as yet untested, and currently only informally backed-up. The IUCr also
haven't yet made a long-term commitment to maintain these sites.
ARR: Thanks for finding out about the IUCr developments. I see quite a lot of diversity on the commission
web sites. Some even direct to external servers (e.g. the Commission on Electron Crystallograpy goes
to http://www.emzm.uni-mainz.de/iucr_cec/. Other Commissions have quite a lot of material on the IUCr
site. Perhaps someone will be able to find out what the SAS commission plans? At the moment even the
few extra pages are not really recent. For example, there is no link to the proceedings of the Oxford
SAS conference.
ARR: I think that the proposed SAS portal will have to go beyond 'blogs' even if these are a useful addition
to the IUCr site.
