So, where is your data? (Part 1)

Among the more difficult challenges facing many research groups are those related to how their data can be archived and shared by other researchers in the field. These are often not trivial problems to work out, and has prevented many paranormal groups from sharing their data on a regular basis. In this two-part article, I am going to discuss some of the new services and technologies AGHOST has utilized and developed in an attempt to solve some of these problems, and ultimately take a step closer to providing all of our investigation data online for the world to access.


Throughout its five-year lifespan, AGHOST has organized more than 200 investigations at various locations across the United States and Europe. And, as you can probably imagine, we have A LOT of data. Investigator reports, data-logging output, photographs, video and audio data of all kinds have been collected by our researchers and archived on various storage media. The trouble is, much of this data has typically been stored offline and is often not immediately available to other investigators or even to other AGHOST members.

So, as the Technical Director for AGHOST one of my goals for 2006 was to help remedy this problem. The results of this effort was the AGHOST Media Archive, and the AGHOST Reporting Database. In this article I will discuss the AGHOST Media Archive, an online archive of AGHOST photographs, video and audio data - all of which is immediately available via the web to other AGHOST members and researchers.


About the AGHOST Media Archive

It is not uncommon to see many ghost hunting groups post a few of their photographs, and sometimes even audio and video clips from their investigations on their website. AGHOST, as well, has done this sort of thing in the past. But as many quickly discover (including myself), posting this data can quickly become a tedious task and ultimately often only provides incomplete information anyway; a small sample of the entire investigation.

So, we clearly needed a better system. Something that can archive ALL of our data yet still allow immediate access to anyone who desires to see it. As with any system, I needed to think carefully about the workflow and how we could quickly publish and archive our data while eliminating any potential bottlenecks. I knew that I needed a web-based solution, something that could scale to thousands of data objects and ultimately handle many gigabytes of data. The system would also have to handle different types of data, from photos, video, audio as well as written reports.

After researching multiple solutions, I ultimately decided to utilize the open-source Gallery2 software. Gallery2 is a web-based PHP/MySQL application primarily designed for digital photos, but can also handle video and even audio data reasonably well. There are also a large number of add-ons available which allows us to enhance its functionality, or fill in any gaps if needed. And it even integrates quite nicely with the Joomla! backend we use for our AGHOSTOnline.org website.

Gallery2 has allowed us to archive and make immediately available much of our older investigation data that was previously not readily available to the rest of the AGHOST community. Now AGHOST members can upload their own photo, audio and video data immediately after the investigation so that other members can view and comment on them.

The archive currently contains nearly 33,000 items, many of which are digital photographs, but the audio and video content is also significant. Even with over 30,000 objects, the archive is still not complete. AGHOST still has many thousands more photos and video clips that are still waiting to be dusted off and uploaded for all the world to enjoy. This will be an ongoing project for 2007.

The Media Archive is currently only available to AGHOST and AGHOSTOnline members. This is done primarily for privacy reasons. However, anyone may obtain an AGHOSTOnline account for a small yearly fee - basically a small donation that helps offset the cost of a dedicated server. Please visit AGHOSTOnline.org for more information.


What About Reporting?
Photos are nice and all, but what about the reporting data? All AGHOST investigators are required to submit a report after a walkthrough or an investigation. How do we assure consistent and accurate reports, and provide immediate access to those as well? How can we be sure that the investigator has turned in their reports on time? How can we immediately correlate and search data from, say, 100 reports from 15 different investigations? In the next part in this series we'll discuss the AGHOST Reporting Database and how AGHOST is helping to solve the reporting problem as well.