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Re: dam-l Announcment
>
> Dianne, thanks for all your hard work the past five years. You have done our
> world a great service... the kind which is rewarded from the heart and not
> the wallet. Maybe Sarah would be willing to pay you as a subcontractor to
> provide and continue to update your own archive on their site. We
> don't need
two to get the word out, just one that is comprehensive and widely available
> on many web sites.
I agree. I'd always intended to make the archive searchable and expand it.
But with no funding, well... what can I say.
Though you cannot see them DRWG is actually bigger than yours truly.
We aren't huge but there are under 10 of us. I'm just the only one
with the web and technical chops and the knowledge of the literature on dam
impacts in the group. The idea for the archive was actually Michael
Richardson's. Michael is the donor of the webspace and account and
the sysop here at sandelman. He thought it would be good back when
many of you hadn't even heard of the web, to put the information
accrued on impacts of dams online since 1991 as a result of group members
research.
Since that time people from labs, insitutues, ex government folks
and others have sent DRWG information to place on the website.
We lack a scanner so much of this has been handcoded. When this
started it was on a 286, LAN'd to Michael's machines. One ned
not throw money around if one knows the technology and how
many bells and whistles are necessary.
It was always meant to be onestop shopping, with a special focus on
peer-reviewed literature, review papers and stuff that hadn't made it from
the real world through the scinetific process to the stacks, never mind
to the mainstream press.
Becasue we wanted information to be universally avaialble and not just
to those with the latest techno bells and whistles, I've gone out of my way
to make sure things are ccessible through any browser, from lynx on up
to Mosaic, Netscape and IE, with a lot of help from Michael.
I've wanted to make it searchable and expand it but for
want of funding this has yet to happen.
The Canadian Directory on Foundations simply showed that Canada
is not a country that cares much in terms of funding things outside
its backyard, in the main. Seed funding would have to come from an
American or internatinal agency or foundation.
But with no money to schmooze what to do?
We've kept costs down because we had to and being in Ottawa doesn't hurt.
CISTI is here. They don't need to ship anything anywhere. And of
course DFO and Environment Canada's libraries are also here [many
of them anyway :]. And of course the two universities here - Carleton,
and U. of Ottawa.
Really, I wish I'd known that FAO was looking for such information.
But I'm not in any international funding loop. And neither are the other
members of the group - primarily scientists.
One of the purposes of the archive - to get the word out on
impacts, through bibliographies, grey literature, and information
gleaned from other listservers that may be of interest to listmembers.
It would be good to work *with* the World Fisheries Trust on this.
What does everyone else think?
<snip>
*blush*
Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Irwin!
-Dianne
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