Hello all,
Firstly my apologies for being very slow to respond regarding zoobook. In part this is due to family life and a very hectic work schedule. To my shame I currently have 697 unread zoo arch@JISCMAIL messages in my inbox. These days I find if I’m
not spending my evenings at the computer I struggle to keep up with all the ZOOARCH correspondence, in the battle between work and life, my wife always wins (luckily she’s away at the TAG conference at the moment). But I have also been slow because I’ve been
racking my brains for awhile now about what to do about zoobook.
As has been mentioned on this list before, it is possible for the 1,300+ zoobook members are able to send out invite links. Also zoobook was set up as a social network so the idea is no one person should be gatekeeper.
When Zoobook was first started (2009) the initial idea was it would allow somewhere for people to share reports, publications etc. At this point I’d just finished my PhD and was a jobing commercial zooarchaeologist working for a small CRM company
in the UK. Its sometimes easy to forget how fast technology moves. At the point zoobook was created, Facebook and the iPhone were new things; few people were on twitter and dropbox didn’t exist in its current form. For a few years Zoobook was very successful.
Members could add file storage ares and membership rapidly grew. At that point the company hosting Zoobook, NING, was free for under a certain membership size. Unfortunately, NING changed its model and a fee was introduced for the hosting of the network. With
this was also a gradual reduction in services, for example the file storage areas no longer work.
At this point I raised the possibility of closing zoobook, but i received a number of moving emails from zooarchaeologist in african and near eastern countries who at the time really struggled to access resources and zoobook was very useful for
them. So I let zoobook continue and paid the £200 a year to keep the website open, with the occasional very generous donation from other zooarchaeologists. Over the years as I have moved into an academic position and my personal circumstances changed with
marriage and children I have struggled to keep up with the maintenance and upkeep of zoobook. It unfortunately always ends up at the bottom of a very long list of things to do. Currently zoobook is on an older version of the Ning platform, to upgrade to the
newer version of the platform for a site with over 1000 members would cost £480 per year. This is turning into a moan and i don’t want it to be. I also don’t want to put off any PhD students or post-docs thinking of doing a similarly crazy thing. I would say
go for it, but think about legacy for the site in 8 years time.
Despite all this Zoobook stills seems to remain popular, although now primarily as a photo sharing site.
So I’ve been working on the site this evening and have decided to make some changes.
- The site is no longer protected by the need for an invite. You can now join from the login page. This removes the biggest complaint about zoobook, new members getting an invite. Also documents are no longer shared on the site so there is no reason
to keep membership so tightly controlled.
- I’ve tided up aspects of the site so its strip down to just its essentials now. Groups, forum, photos and events.
- I’m going to investigate alternatives to the Ning platform and if anyone out their wants to help or indeed takeover zoobook then please contact me.
However zoobook continuing in its current mode depends on the Ning platform and the company will possible shut down the older (2.0) networks next summer. So I’m going to re-evaluate Zoobook at the start of the summer and perhaps shut it down then.
All the photos on zoobook (over a 1,000 now) are archived and they could perhaps be uploaded to Bonecommons if people think there is a need.
All the best
Jim
uclanarchaeology
uclan.academia.edu/JamesMorris