Palmer Station LTER SiteFlash - August 1999 - Karen Baker Field support for the traditional field season (annual January cruise and seasonal October through March station work) included involvement with personnel and equipment logistics, real-time field data review and data archive in addition to year round weather data collection, biomass monitoring and field updates. The past January cruise and season were synthesized and submitted to the Antarctic Journal for publication. A June process cruise crowded the already full year's events but fired everyone's enthusiasm. Since the Palmer LTER time-series of summer-spring water column sampling data is affected significantly by the previous year's ice, this was a unique opportunity to explore the winter Antarctic ice "hands on". This ice cruise also included data distribution via CD at cruise end, new methods investigations (including Beta Testing Turner Design fluorometric solid standards) and education outreach through web communications. Partnership of information management and educational outreach continued with a March Workshop at UCSD/SIO and a 'Teacher Experiencing Antarctica' (TEA) intern at UCSD/SIO with information management in July. A Palmer LTER Education Outreach Forum in conjunction with the National Center for Ecosystem Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) was the first education meeting held at NCEAS giving Palmer the opportunity to bring together national and local representatives (scientists, educators, teachers and information manager/technologists) to begin exploration of potential directions for a sustainable long-term educational program. A proceedings is in preparation. Funded through OPP, the Palmer site has been ineligible for the LTER technology supplements through DEB over the past years so continues to depend on the Institute for Computational Earth System Science (ICESS) infrastructure. A few weeks internship for K. Baker with the network office provided valuable training and an opportunity for interface with network projects such as siteDB development, registration form centralization, web structure design and accessibility, creation of a network home page 'Information Management' link in addition to the 'data' link, migration of meeting pages to the network /www directories, preparation for passing the IM meeting page to another site datamanager, proposal discussions and lead on a multi-authored manuscript submitted to BioScience presenting an overview of the current LTER IM paradigm. The LTER Information Manager Newsletter, DataBits, was redesigned, edited by Karen Baker and James Brunt, with publication of a Spring 1999 issue. Continued efforts were focused on development of at-a-distance communications using electronic coordination (i.e. MS Netmeeting, shared ppt), electronic archives, web page synthesis and portals, and increased field support including digital photographs for both technical and outreach situations). The coordination through information management of a UCSB part-time programming position (Oct98) and staff research associate (Mar99) broadens planning opportunities. Investigations with a variety of relational database software (i.e. miniSQL, mySQL, access) have begun using the LTER Software Survey as a dataset with which to gain experience. The goal is to develop selected prototype elements prior to addressing relationally the Palmer Information System design with LTER metadata, data, bibliography and personnel directory. Karen Baker began preparations for this year's upcoming August site review with an NSF Palmer 2 year review in Washington (May98), prepared materials for the LTER/SCAR Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research meeting (Aug98), attended the LTER Education Committee meeting at the Biosphere (Oct98), presented at an LTER PI meeting at ICESS/UCSB (Dec98), participated in the LTER Network Internships (10-18Jan99, 24-25Mar99, 10Jun99), provided logistics for and attended the LTER DataTask meeting at NCEAS (Feb99), held an initial Education Outreach Workshop with past TEA participant (Mar99), attended an LTER Technology committee meeting at SDSC (Mar99), conducted an OPP 'Teacher Experiencing Antarctica internship (19-30Jul99) at SIO/UCSD, conducted a Palmer LTER Education Outreach Forum at NCEAS (25-28Jul99), and co-authored as well as facilitated through web communications two multi-author joint publications.