Then there is the thorny issue of institutional authority. We have taken the decision to require contributors to put their resources on their own websites, simply sending us summary information for indexing within the database of contributions. We make every effort to monitor contributions, but also state clearly that we are not responsible for material encountered outside our website. STEM runs on the Science Museum's Web server. We use Netscape's Enterprise Server 3.0 running under Microsoft's NT4.
Oyster allows four operations to be carried out.
Oyster takes requests from the user and generates a customised HTML response. When a user wishes to submit a new STEM resource they fill in a form about the resource that is sent to the server. Oyster processes the form, adds the resource information to the datafile but marks it as 'needs checking'. Oyster then e-mails the administrator to say that a new resource needs checking. The administrator checks the resource and uses Oyster to update the record's status field from 'needs checking' to 'active', and carries out any other necessary editing.