“A Library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people.” --Andrew Carnegie

Digital Libraries Building on the tradition of libraries as a community resource –Collecting, organizing, preserving –Sharing –Services for Users –A Community Center –Providing a Meeting Place

A Digital Library Supporting Learning about the Earth- Integrated, multidisciplinary approach to Earth system education Natural connections to the physical, life and social sciences, and engineering disciplines Central facility in support of Earth system education for all

The DLESE Vision A consensus view, developed in a broadly representative community forum. Rapid, sophisticated access to collections of peer-reviewed teaching & learning resources Interfaces and tools to enable student exploration of Earth data sets Services to help users effectively create and use materials A community center to facilitate sharing and collaboration

Good libraries help institutions & communities –Change patterns of information flow & learning –Establish an “intellectual commons” Libraries built with digital technologies can –Foster new (geography-independent) communities –Offer fundamentally new types of information –Organize information in radically new ways –Engage users as creators, reviewers... Building New Scholarly Communities

NSDL Is A modern digital information environment –Distributed network of collections & services –Immense variety of multi-media materials –Computer-aided discovery, utilizing Metadata created by experts Content analysis Inference A library –Foundation for community advancement –Starting point for anyone who’s curious –Locus of intellectual discourse –Quality materials

NSDL Is Not A centralized, top-down endeavor –NSF (in the past 2 yrs) has award 64 NSDL grants totaling about $38M –One grant (shared by Columbia, Cornell, & UCAR) is for “core integration,” including coordination of all funded projects A gigantic repository for digital materials –NSDL/core points to collections maintained by others, rather than holding them directly –NSDL/core holds metadata records

Key Concepts & Principles (as proposed for year 1 by the CI team) NSDL is an “Education Layer” over the Web NSDL will be seen by –Users, as one library with many portals –Builders, as offering a spectrum of interoperability NSDL soon must exhibit –Diverse collections –Appropriate user interfaces & library services –Means for access & content management –A framework for technical evolution –Educational excellence Note: NSDL embraces much more than the NSDL-funded projects

For Creators and Contributors:

For Users:

BEOn Biology Education Online An interactive, peer-reviewed, online journal for teaching and learning biology Access Excellence and National Association of Biology Teachers

Serc.carleton.edu Integrating services and collections –Support “On the Cutting Edge” professional development workshops –Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences –Community Issues and Groups –NSDL Portal for Using Data in the Classroom –Research on Learning in the Geosciences –“Starting Point” resources for introductory courses

“Criterion II”: Broader Impacts Digital Libraries can substantially help projects to address Broader Impacts Consider Partnering with –Math Science Partnership –Course, Curriculum, Laboratory Improvement Integrating Education and Research in Biocomplexity site –Serc.carleton.edu