Administration
Github
The current hub is published via Github. Github is a commercial service provider offering GIT services plus a number of add-ons to facilitate co-creation. Alternative GIT providers can be considered, such as gitlab, bitbucket. Notice that it is also possible to install gitlab on premise.
As an LSC hub administrator it is relevant to familiarise yourself with Github. Notice that some tools exist to facilitate the use of Git, such as Github desktop, Smartgit and Git Kraken. Some prefer the Github plugin of Visual Studio.
LSC Hub
A number of content pages is made available to guide the user within the hub. These pages are maintained in github as markdown. Notice the edit link in the footer of each page. The pages are rendered to html using the quarto tool. Editing of quarto documents is facilitated by a quarto plugin in visual studio.
The quarto tool is configured as a ci-cd action in github. You can follow the progress of an action in the actions tab. In some cases an action may fail and human interaction is needed to fix the problem and/or restart the action.
Discussions
Discussions are managed within github. A giscus widget is added to every resource page, so users can provide feedback or ask questions about the resource. These questions are stored as github discussions. Discussions can be answered from the resource page (a github login is required) or from github discussions. Users should be invited to the github project to be able to administer github discussions.
Maps
The TerriaJS framework enables users to share maps and map stories with stakeholders (share button top-right). Notice that you can also use this functionality to link from a description of a resource to a map, which displays some data in a certain context.
[A nice map](https://maps.lsc-hubs.org/#start=%7B%22version%22%...)Another option is to store the map definition (urldecoded) on a folder of TerriaJS. The map is then available by its filename. You can now add a link to this map for example in the related maps section of TerriaJS (config.json).
Map services
Map services on source data are configured using mapserver mapfiles. The configuration is generated from the metadata of the source data using the geodatacrawler tool. Mapfiles are stored on a NFS (accessible via webdav) or in the mapserver (docker) container. Source of the mapfiles is preferably stored on Git.
Every new mapfile is registered in the mapserver config file as an alias
Catalogue
The catalogue can be linked to various information sources, without the data being stored on the LSC hub. Therefore, if you know existing information sources that are missing and should be added. Proving metadata is essential for findability and to avoid ambiguity.
Source of catalogue records is maintained at github. Records are organised in Global, Continental, and country. Within country they are organised by portal/initiative.
Metadata records are stored in the mcf format, a subset of iso19115 in a conveniant yaml encoding. But you can also add them as iso19115 xml format.
A number of mechanisms is available to load records into the catalogue.
- Import records from external sources, such as data portals (zenodo, dataverse, CSW, STAC, OSF)
- Mcf records can be created using mdme
- A Excel template is available, on which resources can be described. A single resource per record.
- An ODK form is available on which users can describe resources
