Collaborative Project: Core Integration of the National SMETE Digital Library

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A team of institutions is developing the technical capabilities and executing the organizational responsibilities of the core integration component of the National SMETE Digital Library program. Collaborators include: UCAR, Cornell University, Columbia University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at the University of Massachusetts, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. The project is bringing together many efforts already underway, and engaging new efforts as well, in support of a comprehensive large-scale digital library that promises to enhance every aspect of education in science, mathematics, engineering and technology. The organizational and technical underpinnings of the proposed work fall into three categories of effort, each within the overall context of educational excellence: 1) engaging the community, 2) providing technology, and 3) operating core services. To promote the vision of a strong NSDL community that sees itself as owning the program and having major influence on the character of the library, the project team is working with all NSDL-funded projects, helping to integrate their work into the library. Additional partnering with efforts such as those funded by the NSF's Digital Library Initiative and by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and independently developed collections and services, is also taking place. Development and support of models for intellectual property and digital rights management are being undertaken, as well as promotion of a library evaluation framework, administration of an NSDL program advisory group, and development of an overall governance mechanism for the NSDL. A robust, flexible information technological infrastructure is being implemented based on two themes: a spectrum of interoperability and "one library with many portals". Technical components include a flexible portal architecture, a central metadata repository, an open source tool kit for access to rich content, and a database for authentication and user profiles, all emphasizing openness and long-term evolution. Finally, support is provided for a very wide array of educational and library services, emphasizing in this initial phase: operation of the primary portal and specialized portals for the NSDL community and the NSDL partners, comprehensive information retrieval services to search for collections or individual items, and an optional service for user profiles and authentication. The other two awards in this collaborative project are 0127308 and 0127520.