MiNC: NSDL Middleware for Network- and Context-aware Recommendations

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Services are being developed to aid teachers, librarians, and learners in sharing resources and promoting further access to NSDL resources. The Middleware for Network- and Context-aware Recommendations (MiNC) being developed provides online integrated services for a) understanding the personal activity context through access patterns and analysis of user documents, b) context-aware resource discovery, including search, presentation, and exploration support within the knowledge structure (e.g. Strand Maps) provided by NSDL, and c) peer discovery, peer-network management, and peer driven resource and knowledge sharing and collaborative recommendations.To support these services, several specific tasks, including representation of the personal activity context, context-aware ranking, filtering, and previews, and integration of context and collaborative filtering are being accomplished. As an integrated service, MiNC operates on existing NSDL digital collection resources as well as on materials from other sites and repositories through available standard interfaces. For accessing NSDL resources, it leverages existing Open Archives Initiative (OAI) based protocols, available web service interfaces based on the Concept Space Interchange Protocol (CSIP), CSIP-Adaptable (CSIP-A) services as well as available NSDL Data Repository APIs. MiNC also integrates with other services, such as IntegraL. The middleware provides API based services to enable future projects and other NSDL contributors to leverage MiNC components, technologies, and information spaces.The potential exists for MiNC to have a broad educational and social impact. The open interfaces enable future service developers to develop better interfaces targeting general user populations. In addition to the direct educational impact through NSDL, the MiNC system is being integrated into both undergraduate and graduate courses as a project platform. This introduces computer science students to information extraction, information management, recommendation, visualization, and privacy issues as well as to familiarize the students with the important theories related to e-learning.