The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) http://nsdl.org
An Introduction and Overview ASEE 2005 Annual Conference
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NSDL Vision
A Learning Environment and Resources Network
for Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Designed to meet the needs of teachers and learners, in both individual and collaborative settings
Constructed to enable dynamic use of a broad array of materials for learning, primarily in digital format
Managed actively to promote reliable anytime - anywhere access to quality collections and services.
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A Short History of NSDL
Prototype Phase: 2000-2001 Site for Science
Startup Phase: 2001-Dec. 2002 Initial Release, Dec. 2002
Current Phase: 2003-2006 Technical improvement and consolidation Community building Extending the model
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NSDL Audiences
Students: primarily K-16, but including life-long learners
Teachers: both as mediators of student content, and as users themselves
Partners: NSDL funded projects (Pathways, collections, services), other data and service providers
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Project Characteristics
Current content domains include: various engineering disciplines, life sciences, physics, mathematical sciences, sub-areas of geosciences, chemistry, materials science, anthropology, economics, demography, computer science, statistics, bioinformatics, linguistics, plus cross-disciplinary collections
Thematic projects growing: e.g. video collections, services for targeted audiences, etc.
Increased involvement of professional societies Nascent private sector and publisher involvement Numerous formal collaborative projects
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NSDL: A portal of portals?
NSDL.org Basic services: gather, search, archive General purpose user interface AskNSDL—a Virtual Reference Desk Links to associated portals
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What are the NSDL Portals?
“NSDL Portals provide specialized views of selected NSDL resources organized around the needs of specific audiences. These audiences may be defined by grade level, discipline, resource or data type, or some other designation. Portals represent a strategy for building the NSDL in a manner that best supports efficient resource discovery for broad categories of users. NSDL Portals are developed and managed in partnership with organizations and institutions that have a history and expertise in serving the portal's target audience.” – http://nsdl.org/ofinterest/?ctype=rss&rss=partner_libraries
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Pathways Projects Middle School Portal--Middle School Math, Science, and
Technology presented by Eisenhower National Clearinghouse Pathways to Science--Rich media for K-12 teaching presented
by Teachers' Domain at WGBH The Math Gateway--Undergraduate Mathematics presented by
the Mathematical Association of America The Computational Science Education Reference Desk--
Computational Science presented by the Shodor Education Foundation
The Applied Mathematics and Science Education Repository--Community Colleges presented by Internet Scout at the University of Wisconsin
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Back-end Services
Repository—currently metadata only, transitioning this summer to a mixed metadata and content repository
OAI-PMH harvesting and data provision (close to 1 million records)
Metadata management and quality improvement tools and services
Search
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More Back-end Services
User authentication—based at Columbia, using Shibboleth
Archiving—based at San Diego Supercomputing Center
More to come: Automated metadata creation—working with
INFOMINE/iVia Additional group management access Content and Communications system
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Collection Development
Director of Collection Development Manages distributed group of volunteers and
partner staff recommending resources to NSDL in specific subject areas
Recommendation Service enables authorized parties to add resources, and provides a combination of machine-aided and human editable functionality for record creation (including controlled vocabularies)
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Future Collection Development
Automated methods Increase number of resources at the item level Test and improve crawling strategies and
automated metadata creation Enable further collection developer activity
- More “editors”- Firmer process for maintaining quality of collections
Increasing reliance on subject- and thematic- based domain pathways to build high quality curated collections
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NSDL Funded Collections
KMODDL 2nd Generation Mathematics DL NEEDS Teach Engineering
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Looking Behind the Curtain
Metadata and Content Hierarchy and granularity
The “Quality” issues Missing Gatekeepers Who sez?
Evaluation and evolution Mission definition Audience definition
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Hierarchy and Granularity
Why only two levels? “Item” is the basic unit
Items can be individual documents, websites, aggregations, images, video clips, etc.
Items are ingested and maintained via automated processes
“Collection” is a practical construct Arbitrary levels keep decisions simple Relationships between items and collections
support quality inferences
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Quality Issues
Gatekeepers The traditional library model The “Automated” model The “Trusted” model
Who sez? Attributing assertions Improving service provision
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Evaluation and evolution
Mission definition The attempt to “do it all” CI the organizational and technical “glue” for a
broader notion of NSDL
Audience definition From “K to gray” to K-16 Stronger focus on services to teachers
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Community Development
Management structure includes National Visiting Committee, Policy Committee and other working committees
Annual All-Projects meeting integrates new and previously funded projects and provides opportunities for networking and collaboration
New community site with enabling functions in process for the coming year, replacing an older CommPortal used primarily by technical staff
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Some Lessons So Far
One size never fits all—general and special audiences need to be accommodated
Issues are increasingly social rather than technical—community building, feedback, needs analysis—all loom large as NSDL enters a more mature phase
Most important constraints are imposed by limited resources, not limited ideas
Finding a middle path between the culture of librarianship and that of research and technology is a persistent challenge
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What’s Ahead?
New Pathways projects this fall need to be integrated
Changes in technical infrastructure will provide significant challenges, and potential benefits
Collaborations with teacher groups promise more direct information about needs and usage
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Additional Information
http://nsdl.org - About NSDL http://comm.nsdl.org - Communications Portal -
user and developer exchange and community building
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/zia/03zia.html - a look at the “big picture”