NSDL 2.0: Building a Collaborative Digital Library

Dean Krafft, Cornell Universitydean@cs.cornell.edu

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 http://nsdl.org)

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 (http://www.fedora-commons.org)

Open source project with $2.2 million in Mellon Foundation funding 2002-2008, evolving into the Fedora Commons, which just received $4.9 million in Moore Foundation funding 2007-2011

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

PublicationResource

Data SetMetadat

a

PublicationMetadata

Data SetResource

CodeResourceCites

Metadata for

Member of

MetadataProvider MatForge

Collection

SoftMatter

Collection

Member of

Cites

Metadata for

CornellCCMR

MatDLPathwa

ySelectorfor

Selectorfor

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

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org 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 http://strandmaps.nsdl.org

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-PMHHTTPRESTNDR API

STEMCollections

SearchServiceArchive

Service

Fedora-basedNDR

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

RepositoriesLearning

Environments

NSDLCollections

Institution-Specific Content

User-Contributed

Content

Publisher-ProvidedContent

Represented in NDR

Institution-Specific Services & Interfaces

NSDL eLearning Platform

Rich Descriptions of

LearningGoals

• 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 14850 USA dean@cs.cornell.edu

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