Almost overnight, after WWW servers became available, LTER data sets began springing up on the web, accessible to anyone through an extensive network of site-based servers. LTER was clearly in the forefront of sharing scientific data over the web but it didn’t happen network-wide without a little prompting from the CC and Jerry Franklin — Chair of the CC at that time – in the form of a mandate for putting LTER data online. Currently there is information available on more than 2000 data sets collected at LTER sites through a searchable data catalog with hyperlinks to extensive metadata and data (http://www.lternet.edu/DTOC).
