NSDL Materials Digital Library Pathway: Hub for Materials Education and Research

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In this project a consortium of organizations is building an information infrastructure on the foundation of the current Materials Science Digital Library collection (MatDL) and assuming stewardship of significant content and services to support the integration of education and research in materials science (MS). Additionally, this Pathways project is facilitating the dissemination of resources generated by government-funded MS collaborations. The MatDL partnership includes information/library scientists and materials scientists affiliated with government and research/teaching institutions: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kent State University, MIT, University of Michigan, Iowa State University, and Purdue University. To multiply the impact of NSF-supported materials efforts, this network of collaborations is being extended to include several related NSF initiatives: Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Teams, Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers, and International Materials Institutes. The intellectual merit of this effort lies in its provision of tools to describe, manage, exchange, archive, and disseminate data among national and international government-funded materials teams and centers; support for open access development of modeling and simulation tools; development of services and content for virtual labs in large undergraduate introductory science courses; and the maintenance of a workspace for collaborative development of core undergraduate MS teaching materials as well as ontological tools for enhanced resource discovery. The project exercises broader impact by serving as a dedicated hub for the large materials research community, facilitating communication and interactions among its members. MatDL offers the opportunity to create learning objects based on recent research, as well as convenient access to relevant, shared resources and learning objects. Because of its inherent interdisciplinary nature MatDL also has an impact on a large constellation of STEM disciplines. The Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) is providing significant co-funding of this project in recognition of important role played by materials science education and research within the larger MPS portfolio of awards.