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 SMETE-Lib workshop 1999 NSDL Solicitation Core Integration System projects + 23 others funded very large Core Integration System project to be funded

3 Collections and Services Scientific and technical information Materials used in education Materials tailored to 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 ArmsOverall coordination Carl LagozeArchitecture Diane HillmannMetadata Dean KrafftSystems Rich MarisaArchitecture and engineering Mutaamba MaashaProgramming John SaylorCollections development Carol TerrizziDesign and communications Sarah ThomasCornell University Library Herbert Van de SompelServices

11 The NSDL as a Collaborative Venture How 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 ( 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 materials include formally published materials, preprints, web sites and similar materials be 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 Discovery and 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 LevelAgreementsExample FederationStrict use of standardsAACR, MARC (syntax, semantic, Z and business) HarvestingDigital libraries supplyOpen Archives basic metadata; simple protocol and registry GatheringDigital libraries do notWeb crawlers cooperate; services mustand search engines seek 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: IMS FGDC or 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?