Masters of the New Medium:
SCD's Digital Information Group Is the Webber's Friend

So you've learned a bit of hypertext mark-up language (HTML). You know how to plunk a home page onto your division's World Wide Web server. You've put in a couple of links to graphical interchange format (GIF) images.

What next?

There's a new group in the Scientific Computing Division that is devoted to helping you and your colleagues put the best possible pages onto the Web. The nine members of the Digital Information Group (DIG) were recruited from various groups within SCD to form a new unit this summer as part of a divisional reorganization. They are now at work assembling tools, building templates, and answering questions for all of us in NCAR, UOP, and UCAR.

Understanding the significance of the World Wide Web's exponential growth, SCD/DIG is encouraging staff to explore the benefits of acquiring and producing information in digital form. "In addition to its numerous advantages and great potential, digital publishing is lots of fun," says Greg McArthur's head (shown accelerating upward at the left of the image). The original image was taken with a low-cost, low-resolution digital camera that eliminates the film development and printing process; it allows images to be downloaded directly from the camera to a computer accessible from a Web server. The image shown here was hastily modified by Jim Petruzzelli and Lynda Lester (DIG) and Carlye Calvin (Graphics Services) using Adobe Photoshop.

DIG is headed by Greg McArthur, NCAR's Webmaster and a tirelessly enthusiastic proponent of the Web. "I want to see if we can migrate the whole culture from wanting a printed document in the hand to discovering and using information from the Web," says Greg. "We want to make screen interfaces so intriguing and appealing that people will want to look at the Web-based information instead of a print version."

SCD has gotten a head start on this paradigm shift. This year the division has ceased print publication of virtually all its documentation, with everything now available through the Web and Gopher interfaces. Print documents that remain, such as SCD Computing News, can be found on the Web with color photos and some electronic-only touches. (The final printed issue of SCD Computing News appeared this summer.) Other NCAR divisions and UCAR programs are making their own splashes on the Web; see below for a sampling.

Last fall the NCAR Annual Scientific Report (ASR), produced primarily for the NSF, became the first major institutionwide document to be published in a Web-only format. Greg worked with the divisional contacts for each section, many of them novices to HTML coding. Each division retained its own formatting style. Users could print out a section or the whole document with a simple command. NCAR saved tens of thousands of dollars by not printing the hefty document. "My belief is that people usually want subsets of information," Greg maintains. "They might want pages four through nine, for example--they don't necessarily want to print out the whole book."

One-stop shopping

Ideas gleaned from the group's surfing will be put to use in creating templates that will be made available to anyone in UCAR. For instance, each NCAR division is receiving a template for use in building this year's ASR.

You'll be able to get more than templates from DIG. The group will soon release to all users Web pages with icons, color bars, and other graphic tools that can be copied and used a la carte in developing and designing your own Web pages. In the SCD tradition, you can also get one-on-one consulting and advice on Web page creation.

Greg notes that the philosophy of user-friendly Webbing is a hot new field. "In the first generation, a year or two ago, we were asking questions like, How do forms work? We're past that now. We're asking, How can we make forms easier to use? How can we make them more intuitive?" At some point, Greg hopes to remake the NCAR Web site in that spirit. "I'd like to move away from the organizational path and rework it completely based on what we do--research, facilities, support."

One of the more problematic aspects of Web production is verifying that one's pages will work for all clients (such as Mosaic and Netscape) and platforms (Macintosh, PC, Sun, and others). To address this problem, Greg and his group have assembled a suite of clients allowing the group to make sure that various techniques are functional and aesthetically acceptable on all platforms.

In these days of chargebacks, users will be pleased to find that DIG's services are gratis. "We've had to wrestle with the fiscal issues. Should we charge divisions for what we do? So far we've decided no--this is part of our fundamental purpose. I think it's something the whole institution needs."

Putting Web heads together

Meanwhile, the Web will play a major role in a new NSF-sponsored project to enhance and unify the data services offered throughout UCAR. Principal investigators for this three-year effort are SCD director Bill Buzbee, Atmospheric Technology Division director Dave Carlson, and Unidata director Dave Fulker, in close coordination with the NSF's Cliff Jacobs. The idea is an outgrowth of an all-day forum on data services held in February at the Mesa Lab, followed by a March workshop. The proposal can be viewed on the Web at http://unidata.ucar.edu/staff/dave/completed/datawx_proposal.html< p> With the Web universe expanding at warp speed--was it only two years ago that Mosaic was a curiosity?--Greg sees his SCD group as a cadre of scouts exploring the far reaches of Webspace and coming back with information we can use. "When the Web first started, it was primarily flash and dazzle. People were sitting around wondering, Is this really going to take off? Now virtually every major city, company, and government unit has the Web. It's not a flash in the pan; it's the way information is going to be distributed.

"But there's an impossible amount of new stuff every day. Nobody has time to keep up with it all. That's where this group comes in." --BH

A New Abode for Our Web Servers

Members of the Web Council

Some Web Sites of Interest

Atmospheric Technology Division
http://www.atd.ucar.edu/
Beneath a gorgeous logo is a varied collection of reports, newsletters, field facility pages, deadlines for facility users, and other links. You can view the current weather conditions at FL1 and see dramatic imagery from the Eldora Doppler radar's sojourn into tornado country this spring.

Scientific Computing Division
http://www.ucar.edu/scd.html
As befits the Internet nerve center of the institution, this site has plenty: complete and searchable documentation through the Information Resources Catalog, current job queues on SCD machines, easy subscribing to special-interest e-mail lists, and showy graphics from recent high- performance computing collaborations.

University NAVSTAR Consortium
http://www.unavco.ucar.edu/
This page serves the many institutions that are part of UNAVCO as well as the consortium's UCAR-based staff. An extensive data archive includes maps and details on more than 1,400 receivers around the world that monitor tectonic motion through Global Positioning System satellites.>

Unidata
http://unidata.ucar.edu/
One of the earliest and most ardent users of the Web, Unidata offers a wide spectrum of software and support services on its page. Check the Internet Data Distribution section, where Unidata's newly decentralized mechanism for shipping data to more than 130 sites is tracked via up-to- the-minute histograms. The main page's "Links to Elsewhere" is comprehensive and far-reaching.

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