NSDL 2.0: Building a Collaborative Digital Library Dean Krafft, Cornell University

What is NSDL?  An NSF-funded $20 million/year program in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education  A digital library describing over two million carefully selected online STEM resources from well over 125 collections (at  A core integration team (Cornell, UCAR, Columbia) working with 10 “Pathways” partners and over 200 NSF grantees  A large community of researchers, librarians, content providers, professional societies, developers, students, and teachers

NSDL’s Technical Vision  Support for communities across the full range of science, technology, engineering and mathematics research, learning and education  The library as a shared, collaborative, contributory space  Supporting the creation of context around library resources to enhance discovery, use, and understanding  NSDL 2.0 as a platform for developing digital library tools

Object-Centered Sociality

In Architectural terms, we created an NSDL Data Repository that  Supports storing both content and metadata  Allows arbitrary relationships among resource and metadata objects: organization, annotation, citation  Easily integrates with existing semantic web technologies  Accessible through web service architecture of remixable data sources and transformations

The Fedora Vision: A Repository for Rich Information Networks

Fedora: The NDR middleware  A Flexible, Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (  Open source project with $2.2 million in Mellon Foundation funding , evolving into the Fedora Commons, which just received $4.9 million in Moore Foundation funding  Collaboration of Cornell and Univ. of Virginia  Users include:  eSciDoc project (collaboration of the Max Planck Society and FIZ Karlsruhe)  Public Library of Science (Topaz Foundation)  VTLS Corp., Harris Corp., Library of Congress  Australian Research Repositories Online to the World  Royal Library Denmark, National Library, and DTU

What is Fedora?  An architecture, toolkit, and implementation: middleware, not a vertical application  Stores arbitrary internal and external digital objects, disseminations (transformations and combinations), relationships among objects  Entirely SOAP/REST based, disseminations are URLs  XML data store; RDBMS cache; RDF triplestore supports relationship queries

Specializing Fedora  Multiple Object Types:  Resources (with local or remote content)  Metadata  Aggregations (collections)  Metadata Providers (branding)  Agents  Relationships with arbitrary graph queries:  Structural (part of)  Annotation (relates to)

Sample NDR Objects & Relationships Publication Resource Data Set Metadat a Publication Metadata Data Set Resource Code Resource Cites Metadata for Member of Metadata Provider MatForge Collection Soft Matter Collection Member of Cites Metadata for Cornell CCMR MatDL Pathway Selector for Selector for

NSDL: The Production Library  NSDL Data Repository (NDR) implemented using Fedora 2.2 with Proai, MPTStore, and journalling  Primary resources are aggregated using OAI from 130 collections  Proai serves normalized NSDL_DC  MPTStore supports RDF relationships among agents, metadata, resources  Journalling: 3 replicated production repositories

NSDL Data Repository (NDR)  References to over 2 million selected STEM resources on the web and in NSDL web applications  Sourced metadata statements about those resources  Annotation relationships among resources  4.7 million digital objects and 250 million RDF triples  In production at ndr.nsdl.org

NDR API Characteristics  Uses REST calls for all interactions; uses Handle System handles for external references  Ensures external applications can’t violate the NDR model constraints  Disseminations allow combining metadata from multiple sources, or related content  Authentication: Requests signed with private key associated with an agent  Authorization: Agent can become a metadata provider or aggregator; can create resources  API/NDR instance available for development and testing (ndrtest.nsdl.org)

NSDL Service-Oriented Architecture  NDR API provides authenticated access to the repository - Expert Voices (EV), NCS  Search service REST API supports programmatic search - Pathways, Strand Maps  OAI-PMH ingest and server allow batch aggregation and dissemination - all collections, search  Shibboleth Community Sign-On for user authentication - EV, nsdl.org, Engr Pathway,...  SDSC Archive - REST access to archived resources - SERC, nsdl.org  RSS feeds - NSDL editorial content, EV

Collaboration, context, and contribution  The NDR and services provide the platform, but we still need the applications  Solution 1: Leverage the existing successful models: blogs, wikis, bookmarking/tagging  Solution 2: Leverage the existing software: WordPress, MediaWiki, Connotea, Sakai  Solution 3: Engage with partners and the broader community to build applications to the platform: adapting the DLESE Collection System; integrating Instructional Architect

ExpertVoices

Expert Voices?  The NSDL Blogosphere, live at  Topic-based discussions (e.g. forensics) linked to related library resources  An outreach tool to explain and document NSF-funded research  A way for NSDL community members to become NSDL contributors: of resources, questions, reviews, annotations, metadata  A question/answer and discussion forum: scientist ↔ teacher ↔ student ↔ librarian

Hurricane Floyd/Photo by NASA

Photo by Jon Crispin

Expert Voices Implementation  Wordpress-based multi-user multi-blog application (open source, plug-in architecture)  Published entries become NSDL resources  Owner controls publication of entries and visibility of comments  Entries can contain linked references to NSDL resources, references to URLs that should become resources, and new resource metadata  Integrated with NSDL Shibboleth-based community sign-on (Wordpress plug-in)  Blog(s) available as RSS feed(s)

NSDL Wiki  Community of approved contributors (e.g. teachers, librarians, scientists) are granted edit access on OurNSDL wiki  New resources and metadata are created as wiki pages and reflected into the NDR  Non-wiki-based NDR resources and metadata are displayed as read-only wiki pages, subject to comment and linking  User and project pages organize NDR resources  Implemented as MediaWiki extensions

NSDL Concept Map Tool  Implementation of AAAS concept maps and benchmarks from Atlas of Science Literacy  Part of an ongoing effort to relate NSDL resources to educational standards and benchmarks  Beta version live now at

DLS Strand Map Service Computational model of interconnected learning goals or concepts –Progressions and Maps: How ideas change over time –Pedagogically-rich descriptions: knowledge propositions, rationale, learning resources, standards, misconceptions, assessments Visualization algorithms based on Project 2061 graphical conventions Content based on AAAS internationally- recognized science learning goals XML and SVG Web service API for deployment through own portal and look-and-feel Query registry to customize searching over your collections

MyNSDL: NDR-integrated tagging, bookmarking, and recommendation  Based on Connotea open-source folksonomic tagging/bookmarking system  Tags and bookmarking structure are reflected back into the NDR  Authorized users can “automatically” recommend new NSDL resources simply by tagging them  Gives user a personal view of NSDL resources

Other planned collaborative tools  OnRamp: multi-user, multi-project NDR-integrated CMS  Instructional Architect: Lesson plan creation for K12 teachers (Utah State)  Moodle or Sakai Course Management System: courses integrated with NSDL resources  Content Assignment Tool: assigning educational standards to resources

Putting NSDL in the path of the user  Goal is getting users to the right NSDL resources, not to nsdl.org  Pathways portals provide discipline specific access  NSDL Toolbar (available at nsdl.org/toolbar) allows direct NSDL Pathways/resource access from user’s browser

Search Engine Landing Page  Landing pages are available to web search engines through sitemap files  Provide information on the NSDL context of the resource, including metadata, annotations, related resources  “Selected by NSDL” resource page logo will link back to this page

… NSDL 2.0 Ecosystem Protocol: OAI-PMH HTTP REST NDR API STEM Collections Search Service Archive Service Fedora- based NDR

A publicly available platform  Initial repository and tools targeted at Pathways and STEM education  Tools and systems open source, or extensions to existing open source  Planning release of base platform on SourceForge this fall.  NSDL 2.0 is an open-source open repository, and creates an open environment for contribution, collaboration, and social networking

NDR- API Fedora: Native Interface Discovery Service Strand Map Service Collection Management System NDR Portals Word Press Media Wiki Repositories Learning Environments NSDL Collections Institution- Specific Content User- Contributed Content Publisher- Provided Content Represented in NDR Institution-Specific Services & Interfaces NSDL eLearning Platform Rich Descriptions of Learning Goals Common Service Layer Collection Tools Web 2.0 Tools Strand Map Service Open APIs, highly customizable NDR + Fedora Research-based, NSF- supported Open Source Growing Fedora community Lightweight, common middleware for integrating content and services Mash-ups

NSDL as a Semantic Digital Library  Semantic digital libraries:  integrate information based on different metadata, e.g.: resources, user profiles, bookmarks, taxonomies  provide interoperability with other systems (not only digital libraries) on either metadata or communication level or both  deliver more robust, user friendly and adaptable search and browsing interfaces empowered by semantics

How are Semantic Digital Libraries Different?  Semantic digital libraries extend digital libraries by –describing and exposing their resources in a machine ‘understandable’ way –supporting resources that can be content, digital artifacts organizations of objects (e.g. collections) users, user communities controlled vocabularies, thesauri, taxonomies –exposing the semantics of their metadata in terms of an ontology defined using a formal language –delivering mediation services for communication with other systems

Acknowledgements  NSDL NSF Program Officers  Lee Zia  David McArthur  NSDL Core Integration Team  UCAR: Kaye Howe, PI and Executive Director  Cornell: Dean Krafft, PI  Columbia: Kate Wittenberg, PI  Fedora Development Team  Cornell: Sandy Payette & Carl Lagoze  Univ. of Virginia: Thornton Staples

Contact Information  Dean B. Krafft  Cornell Information Science  301 College Ave.  Ithaca, NY  USA  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. When separated from this work, some images may be covered by separate copyright or license terms.