1

NSDL

The National Science Foundation's

National Digital Library for Science, Mathematics,

Engineering and Technology Education

[a.k.a. Smete, NSDL, Learns, ...]

William Y. Arms

2

The NSDL Library Project

1996 Vision articulated by NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education

1997 National Research Council workshop

1998 Preliminary grants through Digital Libraries Initiative 2

1998 SMETE-Lib workshop

1999 NSDL Solicitation

2000 6 Core Integration System projects + 23 others funded

2001 1 very large Core Integration System project to be funded

3

Collections and Services

Scientific and technical information

Materials used in education

Materials tailoredto education

4

Core Partners

5

All Partners

6

Core Integration System projects

University of California at Berkeley (Alice Agogino) Materials for education in engineering and other disciplines

Cornell University (William Arms)Comprehensive scientific collections and services

University of Missouri – Columbia (Su-Shing Chen)National biology digital library

University Center for Atmospheric Research (David Fulker)Federated NSDL for earth system education

Eastern Michigan University (Ellen Hoffman)Digital community and collections for teacher education

Columbia University (Kate Wittenberg)Columbia Pubscape – NSDL Publishing Center

7

Collections Track

Biology Education Online – An Interactive Electronic Journal

A Digital Multimedia Library for Health Sciences Education

Bioscience Education Net

Digital Library for Earth Systems Education

Atmospheric Visualization Collection

MATHDL – Online Learning Materials in Mathematics

A Digital Library Network for Engineering and Technology

Mathematics, Science, and Technology Teacher Preparation

Geoscience (Solid Earth) Data Sets [Muamia Barazangi]

The Alsos Digital Library

8

Services Track

Prioritizing Content Creation in Digital Libraries

Peer Review of Digital Learning Materials

Electronic Journal of Earth System Science Education Resources

Breaking the Metadata Generation Bottleneck

Discovering, Recommending, and Combining Learning Objects

Information Pathways through NSDL Video

Component Repository & Environment for Teaching Environments

9

Research Track

Metadocuments as Communicative Artifact

10

Cornell Team

William Arms Overall coordination

Carl Lagoze Architecture

Diane Hillmann Metadata

Dean Krafft Systems

Rich Marisa Architecture and engineering

Mutaamba Maasha Programming

John Saylor Collections development

Carol Terrizzi Design and communications

Sarah Thomas Cornell University Library

Herbert Van de Sompel Services

11

The NSDL as a Collaborative VentureHow to ensure that the projects become partners, not

competitors

12

Fundamental Question: Leverage

How can the NSDL Library be more than the sum of its parts?

Which separate activities can NSDL bring together?

Which existing, fragmented activities can be combined as the initial nucleus of NSDL?

The projects are attempting to develop a shared vision

13

The NSF

The NSDL needs the NSF to succeed:

Prestige and visibility

Funding for partners and central coordination

Associated research programs

Shared identity (www.nsdl.nsf.gov)

Guidelines and service standards for creators of scientific and technical information!!!

14

Collection Development Policy

The NSDL partners could:

concentrate on educational materials be a general purpose science library

concentrate on open access materialsinclude formally published materials,

preprints, web sites and similar materialsbe a long term archive

Cornell vision: The NSDL must have a very comprehensive collections development policy

15

Audience

The NSDL could:

concentrate on the needs of science teachers serve students directly emphasize independent learners

Cornell vision: The NSDL should aim to serve every one of these communities and more.

16

Information Discoveryand Quality of Materials

The NSDL could:

help people find information provide catalogs and indexes

review educational materials and validate them for scientific and educational

content

Cornell vision: The NSDL should aim to provide every one of these and more.

17

Unanswered Questions

1. The NSDL could:

facilitate new kinds of collaboration

How would this benefit education?

2. The NSDL could:

provide access to curriculum materials

But would people use them?

18

Cornell Architecture:

Interoperability

19

Cornell Architecture

User portals

Distributed collections

Central services, metadata collections, etc.

20

Components of Interoperability

Technical agreements cover formats, protocols, security systems so that messages can be exchanged, etc.  Content agreements cover the data and metadata, and include semantic agreements on the interpretation of the messages.  Organizational agreements cover the ground rules for access, for changing collections and services, payment, authentication, etc.

Challenge is to create incentives for independent digital libraries to adopt agreements

21

Levels of Interoperability

Level Agreements Example

Federation Strict use of standards AACR, MARC(syntax, semantic, Z 39.50and business)

Harvesting Digital libraries supply Open Archivesbasic metadata; simple

protocol and registry

Gathering Digital libraries do not Web crawlerscooperate; services must and search enginesseek out information

22

Metadata Harvesting

Distributed collections

Central services, metadata collections, etc.

Metadata harvest

Central data

23

Metadata

Digital libraries must support:

Unqualified Dublin Core

Digital libraries may support:

IMSFGDCor other recognized metadata sets

Simple XML tagged format -- protocol derived from Dienst

The big question: What effective services can we build with such minimal metadata?

24

Cornell Architecture:

Portals

25

A User's Wish List

To discover materials and services:

• Good science

• Comprehensible to students -- effective for teaching

• Stable -- will not change or disappear

Through services that are appropriate to the user's needs.

• No uniform catalog or index to everything

• Mixture of for-profit and open access information

26

Virtual Collections

NSDL

Links show the members of the virtual collection

27

Cornell Architecture

Portal

Tuner

Channel / Ontology Registry

Central services, metadata collections, etc.

28

Layered System View

Items are stored in (usually) independent repositories.

Surrogates for items and resources are stored in a central index.

Items and surrogates become part of the library by way of gather, harvest and publish services.

A search service allows items in the library to be discovered.

Continued on next slide

29

Layered System View (Continued)

Sets of items and/or resources are represented as channels. Channels may contain filters.

Channels are managed via a channel registry. Channels are grouped and organized in ontologies.

Channels and ontologies may be selected and filtered via a tuner.

The set of channels selected by a user is rendered by a portal.

The repository, catalog, search service and channel registry may be distributed. Multiple tuners and portals may be developed (based on common tools) and customized for specific audiences and applications.

30

Short Term: Demonstration System

Interoperability: Open Archives alpha test with pilot registry and harvester.

Collections: 10 large collections selected for varied content

Metadata: Unqualified Dublin Core, IMS, FGDC

Services: Basic searching and filtering (using minimal metadata), mockup of vocabulary support (?), SFX reference linking (?)

User support: Sample channels (about 100) [RSS]. Resources described to support channels [RDF]. Surrogate repository [Dienst]. Simple tuner. Portal rendering based on stereotypical users.

31

Long Term

What will make the NSDL Library a permanent part of the educational landscape?