The DLESE Program Center: Providing Infrastructure for a Distributed Community Library

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This award is jointly funded by the Directorate for Geosceicnes and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (National STEM Digital Library). The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) is a distributed, community-based library dedicated to improving the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth as a system at all educational levels. As a community-owned library, DLESE is committed to the principles of participatory governance and distributed library construction. The DLESE Program Center (DPC) supports the DLESE mission and the DLESE community by serving as an integrator for community efforts and by providing the basis for program continuity. These integrating and continuity functions are achieved through the provision of technical infrastructure and community support services. The DPC work objectives for this performance period are to: (1) Develop an operational library backbone infrastructure that is tailored to specific geoscience education needs; enables distributed collections and services to act as an integrated whole; and interoperates with other library efforts such as NSDL. (2) Support community capacity building by providing tools, components, and services that enable the development of high-quality collections of teaching and learning resources by community members. (3) Enable systemic change as articulated by the national geoscience educational reform documents through the development of innovative resource discovery interfaces and services. (4) Promote overall library awareness to increase the use of library services by educators and students. (5) Conduct ongoing library operations, including support for community operation of diverse collections and services. (6) Support broad-based community governance. (7) Promote and support DLESE diversity initiatives. (8) Support distributed library evaluations of user experiences, library collections and services, and educational effectiveness. These objectives are informed by the DLESE governing bodies and the broader community, the results of work to date, and the overall library vision as articulated in the DLESE Strategic Plan. The objectives will be measured against two-year and five-year benchmarks for library functionality. These benchmarks were crafted with broad community input, and articulate the stages necessary for library development, growth and sustainability. Meeting these benchmarks requires significant technical developments in the first half of the performance period, with a transition towards an increased operation focus in the latter half. Constant throughout is continued support for DLESE governance and the distributed library building effort. DLESE governance processes are designed to involve community members in all major decisions and to maintain a balance between centralized and decentralized responsibilities. The effort will advance geoscience education by: (1) Establishing DLESE as the premier, trusted source for high quality geoscience education resources. (2) Promoting sustainable library growth through community capacity-building and community participation in library governance, development, and operations. (3) Enabling the library to serve as a catalyst for geoscience educational reform by (a) promoting broad and equitable access to quality geoscience education resources, (b) supporting geoscience literacy goals and Earth systems perspectives, (c) integrating research and education through increased access to and understanding of Earth systems data and data analysis tools, and (d) contributing to the body of evidence on the value and efficacy of digital libraries.