The BioCoRE project entails the development of an integrated, tool-oriented computing and communication environment, BioCoRE, to support distributed computing and collaboration in the field of structural biology.

Joining BioCoRE/Creating a New Account

If you would like to experience the BioCoRE environment, use the column on the left side of this page to either login or create a new BioCoRE account. After creating your account, refer to our installation page for the next step.

If you are wanting to download a server and install it at your own site, you can go to our Local Server page.

Before entering the collaboratory environment new users are asked to 'sign' a consent form, review the BioCoRE user license and bylaws, and to complete a registration form that will yield a basic profile of our user population.

BioCoRE Evaluation

To ensure the effectiveness of this endeavor and to comply with our sponsoring agency (NIH) we include in the BioCoRE environment a built-in evaluation component that will enable an ongoing assessment of the BioCoRE development process and the efficacy of the resulting environment.

The evaluation will integrate users' feedback immediately into the development process and will rely on data generated by interviews, surveys, monitoring of usage patterns, and more . These means will permit the evaluation team to observe closely and assess comprehensively the use and outcome of the collaboratory tools throughout the funding period. During the test bed period (initial four years), all BioCoRE members/users, regardless of their role on the project, are being asked to authorize informed consent forms allowing the evaluation team to observe, record, analyze and publish findings.


Here's a piece of an email discussion about starting to use BioCoRE. It might prove helpful to you as well.

My group has developed a web-based collaborative environment called BioCoRE which allows to share large directories using a our secure webserver. You should not need to install any extra software. If you have Gnome or KDE on your machine then the shared project directories will show up in your file browser and you can simply drag and drop stuff to or from there. It's using a technology called webDAV that allows you to have a folder on your computer that actually reides somewhere else (in this case on our server in Illinois). If you don't mind, I would ask you to get a BioCoRE account.

Go to this website:

http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/biocore/ and click on the link "Do you need an account?" in the grey box on the right. Check the license agreements and click continue. Then fill out the form, click "Create complete account" on the bottom of the page and you're done. You will then receive an email with you password.

Once you have done this you should send me an email with your BioCoRE username and I'll invite to the project that I created. Then you'll receive another email notifying you of the invitation. Then you log into BioCoRE again and click on the red link in the botton left column to accept the invitation. From now on both of us ( and no one else) have access to our project workspace. I have deposited folders there already containing the data you need.

Now, if you are using Gnome you can open https://biocore-s.ks.uiuc.edu/biocore/biofs/ in your file browser. It will ask you for the password you just got. In case you are using KDE you must open webdavs://biocore-s.ks.uiuc.edu/biocore/biofs/ It will ask you for your BioCoRE password and then you'll see a few default folders and one folder with the name of the project. Enter it and you will find directories. You can now copy the data over to one of your local directories using drag and drop. Similarly you can also deposit new files in these folders, overwrite files or create new folders.

In case you have any problems with this part you should let me know. Some versions of the Gnome file browser have troubles with certain character in filenames. Konqueror seems to deal with filenames just fine but some versions of it complain when you copy a whole directory. you need to create the directory in the new location first, then select all the files to be copied and drag them over to the new directory.

Feedback

The BioCoRE team welcomes any comments, questions, or suggestions that you might have concerning our software! Please email us or fill out our feedback form.

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