From frank.nicholas sydney.edu.au Tue Apr 28 21:49:07 2015
From: Frank Nicholas <frank.nicholassydney.edu.au>
Postmaster: submission approved by list moderator
To: Multiple Recipients of <omia-supportanimalgenome.org>
Subject: OMIA update
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 21:49:07 -0500
Dear members of the OMIA Support Group,
Thank you to all those who responded to the query about
the use of OMIA in teaching. To date I have received 29 responses from 19
different countries, which is very encouraging. Given this activity, it
would be helpful to have a web resource for people to exchange their
ideas and practices on using OMIA for teaching. I'll discuss this with
Zhiliang.
Some of you may have noticed mention of OMIA in the latest
issue of "What's new on the NAGRP animal genome web site (#2, 2015)", issued
yesterday on the AnGenMap Discussion Listserv. The item mentions that the
OMIA master database is being moved from Sydney to Iowa State University,
to become part of the animalgenome.org bioinformatics resource.
The background to this move is that from time to time, the OMIA server at
Sydney University would crash, reminding me that I was relying on the
goodwill of university IT people who had no knowledge of, nor interest in,
OMIA. Also, there was zero prospect of me obtaining any Australian funding
for support, let alone enhancement, of OMIA. This meant that if the database
itself needed running repairs (as it does from time to time), I had to rely
on the goodwill of Matthew Hobbs, my Australian colleague who did much of the
development work for the present version of OMIA but for whom I had no means
of paying. With these thoughts in my mind, and in the context of the
collaboration with Zhiliang and Jim Reecy on the grant application to USDA
(mentioned in my previous message), I asked Zhiliang and Jim if they would
consider hosting the OMIA master database. They readily agreed, and the
transfer is now underway, thanks to the generous efforts of Zhiliang and
Matthew.
I will remain as involved as ever, and access to OMIA for users and for
curators will not change. But when the move is complete, OMIA will be
residing in an environment where the prospects for its longer-term
sustainability are far greater than they were in Sydney.
One final point. In contemplating the transfer, Zhiliang mentioned that it
would be great if the URL for OMIA could be omia.org, which is the natural
"homologue" of OMIM's omim.org. Thanks to Zhiliang's detective work, we
discovered that omia.org had been registered on
ICANN<https://www.icann.org/>;. Yesterday I established contact with the
current "owner" of omia.org, and (for a modest fee) I will soon be the new
owner of omia.org! This will become the new main URL for OMIA, but the
present one (http://omia.angis.org.au) will remain active as a redirect.
Regards
Frank
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