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”