Background - About Sakia.org

History

Sakia.org - Historic web site 2005

Sakia.org was first started in 1997 at the University of Kassel in Germany. It was designed to be the overarching search service/engine covering all the other services hosted and provided by the Department of Rural Engineering and Natural Resource Protection as well as relevant external resources. Those services included the e-mail archives of the IRRIGATION-L discussion list (established 1994), the content of the WWW Virtual Library Irrigation (established 1995), the IRRISOFT database (established 1995) and other services and information. With the retirement of Prof. Dr. Peter Wolff in 1998, the Department was closed and the service could not be continued and updated anymore. Changes in servers and IT services provided by the University as well as time and financial constraints caused an initial interruption of the service and, despite several attempts to revive it, it finally led to a hibernation of Sakia.org and the related services.

 

In 2001 and 2002 first preparations were conducted and finally in 2003 a new attempt was made to reactivate these services. Significant time and funding was invested into setting up Sakia.org. A dedicated and stand-alone server was rented to allow an independent continuation of this service for the agricultural water and irrigation community. In October 2003 the first Sakia.org modules could be launched and released to the public.

 

Over time additional services could be added such as the 'land and water' open access e-publishing as well as the on-line applications in irrigation and drainage sections. All services within the Sakia.org system were always provided free of charge to all end users.

 

Some background information as to 2004 is given in: Stein, T.-M., 2004: Sakia.org - An on-line knowledge exchange and communication initiative in the area of 'land and water'.- The Society of Engineering in Agriculture Biennial Conference ‘To Bourke & Back’ 14, 15 and 16 September 2004.

 

Reference

  • Stein, T.-M., 2004: Sakia.org - An on-line knowledge exchange and communication initiative in the area of 'land and water'.- The Society of Engineering in Agriculture Biennial Conference ‘To Bourke & Back’ 14, 15 and 16 September 2004.
  • Stein, T.-M., 1996: IRRISOFT - A World Wide Web Database on Irrigation and Hydrology Software - Journal of Applied Irrigation Science, Zeitschrift für Bewässerungswirt-schaft 31 (1), 51 - 63.