|
Future
Projects
Although
there are many seed preservation organizations and companies that market
open-pollinated seeds, very little effort is made at actually providing
a historical information. We believe that communication and
community are as important to seed preservation as the physical work of
growing and banking seeds.
The following
are "wish list" projects that your support will make possible:
-
Library
- (Please also refer to "Catalog
Scans" and "Library
Donations") This is to be the core function of this research Web site.
Financial support would help to procure and scan
historically important horticultural documents. These document
scans would then be made available.
-
[UPDATE
6/27/04] - A *HUGE* donation was made to the horticultural
library. Read more about it and learn how you can help get the
information available for use by
clicking here.
Adding these 31 boxes of yet to be catalogued books to the 300-plus
old seed catalog titles makes this library a resource worth getting
available.
-
[UPDATE
03/18/08] - Although the library continues to grow, very little support outside of that from the Victory Seed Company has ever been realized.
-
Seed Industry History Project - Along with documenting individuals important to the field of agriculture and the seed industry, this project would begin the process of following the genealogies of companies and organizations.
-
[UPDATE 2/10/07] - This work, although a background task, has begun. Several old companies have been researched. Instead of waiting until complete and thorough histories and timelines are written, we have decided to post them as "works in progress" and update as information is made available.
Click here for more information.
-
Seed
Bank of Genetic Material - The Victory Seed Company has initiated
this project and is actively working at collecting, documenting, and
preserving seeds of edible plant varieties. It is hoped
that this can eventually be maintained under this organization.
Timing will be determined by the "Legal" project below.
-
Legal
- If you are a lawyer or accounting professional and would like to
donate your time to help us through the process of becoming a
non-profit, tax exempt organization, please contact
us. This would allow up to apply for grants and be more
appealing to donors. In this way, we believe that we could become
a structured research organization with the ability to build a physical
research library, seed bank, and compensating the necessary staff.
-
Internal
Web
Server - This would allow us better control to customize
needs and in the long run, be less expensive than a hosted web
service. An internal Web server would allow us to serve up
images (without incurring bandwidth overuse fees), databases, creating
user forums, etc. It would also allow us the ability to add
storage space and other system improvements as necessary.
-
To make this
project more reliable and perhaps more efficient, it will require computer hardware
such as a low-end pc with large
capacity hard drives, tape drive, media, and backup software. If
we all wanted this to be extremely reliable, a mirrored server and large
uninterruptible power supplies with generator backup would be necessary.
-
[UPDATE 10/14/03] - Finally, after over a year of starts and
stops, a server is online. It is tiny, dated, slow and somewhat
limited, it is never the less, running! Click
Here for current system specs.
-
[UPDATE 10/25/04] - As a result of a recent computer system
upgrade / shuffle at the
Victory Seed Company'
, a new (old) computer was donated to become the web server replacing
the very old and dated server that we brought online last fall. It
is not yet implemented as time has not been available.
-
[UPDATE 2/10/07] - The "new" server is now showing signs of age.
It has been continuously powered up and operating for over five years.
It sometimes "forgets" what it is doing and needs kick-started.
Additionally, its hard drive storage capacity has been reached.
New equipment will be acquired and installed as soon as resources
(financial and human) are available.
-
[UPDATE 3/05/08] - The old server continued to limp along and was finally replaced with a server that has greater disk capacity, speed and memory. Additionally, operating system and other software upgrades were made.
-
Internet Connection - We
currently using a 6MB/384 kBps ADSL connection. This is
being provided as part of the
Victory Seed Company's network at no charge. However, it
will not take long to outgrow this connection.
The
estimated cost of an SDSL or T1 high bandwidth internet connection will be about $150 per month.
-
Community
Space
- Along with providing a world-class information resource, we wish to
create a means for connecting gardeners, researchers, organizations
and others interested in the subject material. This can be
accomplished through yet to be determined forum software.
-
[UPDATE 10/14/03] - One of the benefits of working in the Linux
world is the environment of open license software. We were able
to obtain and install (and learn) phpBB2. This is a forum
software application that is full-featured and should serve the
community well.
-
[UPDATE 9/1/06] - Due to a continual attack from spammers and a
lack of human resources, we just could not keep up with the attention
that the board required. It was turned off until we can upgrade
our server and secondly research and implement a more secure and
easier to manage board system.
|
