New document archive streamlines document submission and search process.
One of the most-requested items in last year's Site Survey was an updated version of the LTER document archive. Survey responders felt that the old archive (located under the Documents link at intranet.lternet.edu) was difficult to search and navigate, and bad links often caused frustration.
The old archive was also a source of frustration at the Network Office, as each new document had to be added to the old Access database individually, and linked in several places in order to appear on the doc archive page. This multi-step process has been shortened considerably by the new doc archive and better yet, all LTER members will soon be able to submit documents directly to the archive from the web.
The new archive can be viewed through the documents link on the intranet page, or directly at intranet2.lternet.edu. All documents have been re-categorized into much more specific categories and the new structure is extremely transparent for the user. All document titles were standardized to be as succinct and descriptive as possible, and over 400 documents were moved individually into a new, MySQL-based database after being checked for bad links.
The new archive's search feature is designed to search all titles and document descriptions. Looking for the spring 1999 climate committee meeting report from Luquillo? Entering any one of those key words will bring up the document you need. Each document is represented by an icon denoting its type (doc file, PowerPoint, html, etc.), followed by the title and a short description. This new format should make document archiving and retrieval a fast, efficient process for everyone in the LTER Network.