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Purpose
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According to Sun (Sun Microsystems Inc.),
SunSITE (TM)
(Sun Software, Information and Technology Exchange)
is a Sun Microsystems sponsored program at leading universities around the world,
created to promote the growth and reach of the Internet.
The goals of the SunSITE program are to:
- Provide easy, global access to free software and tools
- Act as a repository for information based on local and national geography and history
- Archive information of general interest, including Sun, local, and government documents
- Promote development and research of new Internet tools and applications
The University of Alberta is home to over 17 million objects and specimens that are used in over 20
academic units for research, teaching, and community service. One of our goals is to make these
resources available to the public, scholars, students, and researchers at universities worldwide; in
the form of virtual tours, interactive models, and searchable databases.
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Clients & Interested Groups
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Some of the groups that SunSITE Alberta benefits are faculty, researchers, and students at the
University of Alberta, as well as those at other universities, and potentially the public worldwide.
We provide a repository of freely available software and information of use to researchers and
developers of internet applications, as well as specific repositories of digital educational objects
of interest to a multi-discipline user base.
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Timeline
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- Late 1996 - we begin discussions with Sun
- July 1997 - a formal proposal is made by CNS to Sun
- September 1997 - May 1998 - collaborative discussions with other groups on campus
- May 1998 - Sun provides an Academic Equipment Grant
- June 1998 - the contract between CNS and Sun is signed
- August 1998 - we receive the initial Sun-donated hardware (E450)
- November 1998 - initial web and ftp content available to the public
- December 1998 - official ceremony opening SunSITE Alberta
- January 1999 - installed Oracle; MACS begins populating databases
- January 1999 - installed the SunSITE AFS file server machine (E250)
- April 1999 - Digital Spatial Library initial data loaded and available to Alberta universities
- August 1999 - Alberta Relais Consortium database online in production mode
- June 2000 - in cooperation with MACI, the Department of Anthropology
begins the Bridgland Repeat Photography project
- July 2000 - the MACI program provides us with the money to purchase a high-resolution digital camera, and a large
format map scanner
- July 2000 - Virtual Museum and Bio-DiTRL projects are in beta test mode
- August 2000 - the high-resolution digital camera and large format map scanner arrive, and are being used for testing and training
- November 2000 - Bio-DiTRL project goes live
- October 2001 - Virtual Museum goes live
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Collaborating Groups
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The SunSITE Alberta Project has been a collaborative effort between the following groups:
- Computing and Network Services
- project coordination
- software development
- systems and database administration
- free software content
- coordination of multimedia resources
- Museums and Collections Services
- University of Alberta Virtual Museum
- development and coordination of several digital collections from many disciplines across campus
- Biological Sciences Department
- Bio-DiTRL - Biological Digital Teaching Resources Library
- University of Alberta Libraries
- digitising the University of Alberta's map collection, one of the best in the world (pending)
- Digital Spatial Library - Canada Census and demographic data (ongoing)
- Alberta Relais Consortium - inter-library loan facilitation (production)
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Future Challenges
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Some of our challenges for the future are handling the increasing volume of information being served
from SunSITE Alberta, and arranging the collaboration of researchers in diverse fields on projects
benefiting a wide audience. We plan to maintain a multimedia centre with high-end digitisation
resources available to researchers and faculty allowing them to easily digitize their collections
and make them available to their audiences.
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