Post on 04-Jan-2016
What is NSDL?
A partnership of NSDL-funded projects A library of exemplary collections and
services with practical educational value
A center of innovation in digital libraries applied to education
A community center, focused on digital-library-enabled science education
Pre-NSDL (FY98-99)
Applications and testbeds focusing on undergraduate education
Multiple projects exploring aspects of the current program
FY00-02 Award Information
354 proposals (~ $225M), 105 awards (~ $63M)
In Collections, Services, Targeted Research: 80 proposals in FY00, 103 in FY01, 156 in FY02 !!
56 projects in Collections, 32 in Services, 10 in Targeted Research
Core Integration project - “technical and organizational glue”
13 NSDL projects co-funded by MPS ($3M), 11 co-funded by GEO ($1.7M), one co-funded by BIO ($100K)
Project Characteristics
Current content domains include: various engineering disciplines, life sciences, physics, mathematical sciences, geosciences, chemistry, materials science, anthropology, computer science, plus multiple 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 28 with explicit pre-K to 12 links, 19 with strong
potential for application to the pre-K to 12 sector
Additional Information
http://comm.nsdlib.org - Communications Portal - user and developer exchange and community building
http://www.nsdl.org - Main Portal
D-Lib Magazine articles:
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march01/ - a look at the “big picture” http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/ - FY02 awards http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november01/ - FY01 awards http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/ - FY00 awards
NSDL Program in FY03
Proposal deadline mid-April 2003 (anticipated) Letters of intent mid-March 2003
(anticipated) Next solicitation expected: early January
2003 (refer to site below)
due-nsdl-program@nsf.gov (contact point) http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/DUE/programs/nsdl/
(links to background reports and related projects)
Collections: The Whys and Hows for the NSDL
Len Simutis
Director of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
And member of the Policy Committee
Collections: Why?
Archival and “just in case” repositories
Specialized audiences and needs New collaborations around shared
resources—scalability, sustainability Digital content in a digital context—
post-bibliographic world Be a part of something new, but not
quite sure what it is
Collections—How
Define user requirements, match resources to audience needs
“islands” of specialized collections Up and running first, retrofit,
export, cross-walk as needed Maintain, build on uniqueness of
resources and audiences
Collections: What ENC has learned
Learning objects require greater cataloging skills and time
Standards have been adopted, but not understood operationally
Plan, design, do, redo, redesign, redo…
Too easy to avoid the big picture, other players
Collections: What’s Next?
NSDL not a library, but a fundamental element in the transformation of educational infrastructure
Islands sink, networks bind The educational object is the
building block—research and services transform the objects in the collections
Collections: The Big Picture
Interoperability is key to sustainability—for collections and the overall NSDL
Have to find better ways to learn from each other
Have to find better ways to contribute effectively to services and research tracks
Re-search in a digital world
Collections Discussion
For the collection builders:What difference has participating in NSDL made for you, and what difference have you made to NSDL?
In general:What do you see as the biggest challenges in building collections currently?
The Instructional Architect
<ia.usu.edu>
Mimi Recker Jim DorwardDavid WileyNSF DUE 0085855 Utah State University
NSDL service tool The Instructional Architect facilitates
the discovery, selection, and use of NSDL resources for creating a personalized, permanent, and annotated collections for instruction
Audience: K-12 teachers seeking to integrate high-quality Web resources in instruction
Instructional Architect
MDR
DLsmete.org
NSDL
SearchInterface
Create accountSearch & gatherCreate & OrganizePublish
Annotated learning objects for instruction (web pages)
NLVM
Instructional Architect
Emergent themes from our NSDL work
Evaluation as research Resource granularity and the
‘reuse assumption’ If we build it, will they come?
Evaluation as research
How to evaluate a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project with an evolving social and technical surround?
How to involve teachers and students as co-participants and researchers?
Granularity & the ‘reuse assumption’
Assumptions about resource granularity?
How to tap into economies of reuse? What is the ‘right’ grain size?
If we build it, will they come?
Rich diversity in ‘we’ and ‘they’ NSDL will be used in innumerable
and unknowable ways -- none wrong
Services Discussion
For the service builders:What difference has participating in NSDL made for you, and what difference have you made to NSDL?
In general:What do you see as the biggest service needs for NSDL currently?
The Walden’s Paths projectPIs: Richard Furuta and Frank M. ShipmanTexas A&M University
Metadocuments as Communicative Artifact to Enable Use of a Research Digital Library in Undergraduate SMET Education (DUE-0085798). 9/1/00-8/31/03.
Design and Evaluation of Maintenance Tools for Distributed Digital Libraries (DUE-0121527). 9/15/01-9/14/03.
Project components
Walden’s Paths System Organize, contextualize, and present
materials selected from throughout the World-Wide Web
Walden’s Path Manager Assist the maintainer of collections of
Web-based resources by flagging significant change to collection items
Walden’s Path Manager
Web-based collections (paths, bookmark lists, …) You can choose materials for
collections but cannot control what happens to those materials subsequently
Requires ongoing maintenance to counteract change
Change can be easy to detect……but hard to understand Page not found/site not found/site unreachable
Is this condition temporary or permanent? Has the material moved somewhere else? Where? Are there reasonable substitutes for this material?
Page has changed Is this a change I care about?
Do care: changes that change the rhetorical purpose of the page; reuse of URLs for other purposes…
Don’t care: pages that are supposed to change (e.g., weather, news), grammatical corrections, ephemeral material such as site counters, …
Walden’s Path Manager
Determine what kinds of changes to Web pages are perceived to be significant
Develop new heuristics and adapt existing ones that reflect perceived change
Provide tools that support collection managers in managing changes within their collections
Walden’s Paths
Project Web pageshttp://www.csdl.tamu.edu/walden/ View example paths Create and view your own paths using
the Web-based on-line authoring tool (registration required)
Download the Walden’s Paths system components (prototype versions) for hosting on your own computer
NSDL and targeted research
Walden’s paths—initiated targeted research track in the first round
NSDL presents an opportunity for a research program to refine novel techniques given the benefit of a clearly-identified use domain
Advantage to NSDL is that the techniques are already tested and accepted within their specialized research communities, although not necessarily ready to be deployed as a product
Targeted research keeps NSDL in touch with future technologies and techniques
By encouraging applications in its significant and interesting testbed NSDL helps to influence topics in its research areas
Targeted research provides the basis by which NSDL can adapt to the future, through partnership with specific research areas, rather than as a passive consumer
Walden’s Paths
Project Web pageshttp://www.csdl.tamu.edu/walden/ View example paths Create and view your own paths using
the Web-based on-line authoring tool (registration required)
Download the Walden’s Paths system components (prototype versions) for hosting on your own computer
Research Discussion
How would you like the results of the targeted research projects to be fed back into the NSDL so that you can take advantage of this information?
Where do you see the biggest area of need for research?