Developing a Core Integration System for a National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library at WWW.SMETE.ORG

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This demonstration project for the Core Integration System (CIS) of a national digital library for SMET Education is providing functioning horizontal and vertical integration of disciplinary collections and associated services. Www.smete.org represents an alliance of nearly twenty partner organizations - disciplinary collections, educational institutions, industry, and non-profit organizations - that is working to establish the basis for a national digital library for SMET education. Collaborators also include strong partners with experience in identifying and collecting digital resources for K-12 education. The project envisions this virtual facility as a place where members of the SMET community of learners interact with one another to develop, locate, use and discuss digital resources that enhance teaching and learning in classrooms, in coursework, in informal settings, and within and across disciplines. Towards this end the PI and team are developing a library portal to demonstrate interoperability of resources and federated search across multiple disciplinary collections. In addition, the project is coordinating the development of shared metadata across multiple disciplines in SMET education and developing subject thesauri and descriptors for describing pedagogy in SMETE. Other activities include participation with other pilot projects in developing a governing structure for the library, developing classifications for ranking materials, and identifying issues associated with curation of aging materials. Significant co-funding of this project is being provided by the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences in recognition of the breadth of disciplinary coverage represented in this work.