NSIT recently rolled out a new campus-wide service called WebShare which allows you to share your files and directories with other people including off-campus users. WebShare is especially well suited for making a large file (or files) temporarily available to a group of people instead of sending it out as an email attachment. It also offers many other useful features such as the ability to create a public drop-box that can be used to receive files from others.
Please note! You need to be very careful to ensure that the access permissions in your WebShare account are set correctly to avoid inadvertently exposing personal or confidential files.
Divisional staff should not use WebShare to store or save any work related files (please read the section below on the “Humanities File Share” for more information). Humanities faculty are encouraged to use WebShare to temporarily share or receive large files but should carefully check their access settings to prevent unintended access by others to sensitive files. Please consult the online documentation for WebShare or call/email NSIT’s 4-Tech support line for assistance.
WebShare is currently limited to 1GB per user which reduces its effectiveness as a long-term backup/storage option for many users. Humanities Computing offers all faculty in the Division 50GB of free space on our research servers (additional storage is available on a cost basis) which can be easily accessed from any Windows or Mac computer or via Unix command line tools. These files are regularly mirrored at a second campus location and backed-up using NSIT’s central backup service. Please contact Lec Maj in Humanities Research Computing if you would like to set-up a user account and space on our servers.
We have also just begun to roll out a service roughly analogous to WebShare for all staff in the Division. The Humanities File Space (HFS) allows staff members to place all of their work related files (in particular, confidential financial, student or personal data) onto a secure server managed and backed up by NSIT. Groups can create folders with shared content and staff will be able to save files in personal folders and allow others to transfer files to them via drop-boxes. The initial pilot rollout of the HFS service was to core divisional staff. Departments, committees, interdisciplinary and area centers in the Humanities Division are scheduled to get their access to HFS later this year. Please contact Manan Ahmed in Humanities Administrative Computing if you have any questions about the HFS service. Technical support for HFS will be provided by NSIT’s 4-Tech support line.
