Ferret needs your support!

["Ed Harrison" <harrison@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

		*** Ferret needs your support! ***


This is a request for help from you, the users of Ferret.

Steve Hankin and I are putting together a request to NOAA management to
continue to provide Ferret support and upgrades to our user community. To make
an effective case, we need to document the extent to which Ferret is an
important research/data management tool outside of our own laboratory, and has
contributed to the advancement of science.

So I'm asking for the following help

 1. Would you please identify yourselves, the research group and institution
 that you are a part of, and the leader(s) of your group;

 2. Would you please send a bibliography of refereed and non-refereed
 publications in which you made use of Ferret;

 3. If you possibly can, please write me a letter, telling me about how Ferret
 assists in your research and how the loss of access to Ferret would affect
 your work. Letters signed by group leaders would be particularly helpful;

 4. If you know of Ferret users in other research groups who may not subscribe
 to the ferret_users Email group, please pass this request for help along to
 them.

We are putting the request for support together right now, so quick replies
will help the most.

Thank you very much!

	Yours, in Ferreting....  Ed Harrison


PS.  For those of you to whom my name is unfamiliar, let me tell you a little
of the history of Ferret.  Steve started building what we now call Ferret back
in 1984, to make it possible for me to do a combination of ocean modeling and
data analysis projects with a small research group.  Steve soon was in charge
of
Ferret and all the many things that Ferret can do, and now runs his own team.
However we join forces in order to do science, keep Ferret capabilities
closely linked to scientific needs as well as data management and access
issues, and to raise money to fund all of the above.  Thanks again for your
help in maintaining this collaboration, which has worked well for over a
decade.