DLI-Phase 2: Columbia Earthscape: A Model for a Sustainable Online Educational Resource in Earth Sciences

Columbia University Press, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This is a standard award. Columbia University Press, the campus computing center, and faculty are collaborating to create new dissemination models for cutting-edge curricular materials, research, and analysis n Earth Sciences. Based upon design and evaluation work already done at Columbia with scholarly online publishing, the goal of this project is to create a fully-integrated, highly selective interactive online resource for educational materials in this field, and to evaluate the ongoing value and economic viability of providing these services on a subscription-based, cost-recovery model to educational institutions, libraries and students. By experimenting with ways to use new developments in digital technology, this project has the potential to transform the way students learn about the Earth and interact with it on every possible level, and it provides models for other disciplines to follow. Discussions with scholars at Columbia University and nationally reveal that internet-accessible, online publishing is a possible solution to the problem in scholarly communication and education of timely access to the latest research results in an interdisciplinary field such as Earth sciences. The project provides access through easy-to-use, cutting edge electronic tools to a moderated, interdisciplinary scholarly online publication of a wide variety of materials being produced in this field. A critical mass of high-quality Earth sciences scholarship and teaching material has been identified as available for electronic distribution with support from its producers. The project is producing models in four critical areas: online content acquisition, review and dissemination; development of a collaborative organization involving scholars, publishers, libraries, and technologists; creation of standardized online technology systems that can be used across projects and disciplines; and editorially selective publication in Earth sciences through use of the online environment. Findings from each model can be applied to the production and evaluation of digital resources in other fields and at other scales, and will address with real data the large questions concerning the usefulness and viability of such projects in the near and long term.