Speaker
Description
For 25 years, the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has accumulated a significant archive of metadata, supported by extensive web-based tools. As the collaboration transitions into a "long-term preservation phase," a key priority is ensuring sustained access to these critical web interfaces in a self-contained and maintenance-free format. Preserving essential metadata—such as the conditions database, run log, and associated configuration parameters—is vital for accurately tagging and contextualizing the petabytes of collected scientific data. This preservation effort is essential for enabling future physics analyses and simulations throughout the next decade.
To achieve this, we explored various web archival strategies, including the use of headless browsers and hybrid solutions, with the goal of effectively capturing the full functionality and appearance of these interfaces. This presentation will detail and compare the advantages and disadvantages of our exploratory methods. Furthermore, we will offer recommendations deemed crucial for ongoing or future experiments facing similar complexities in long-term data and metadata preservation.