A Digital Multimedia Library for Health Sciences Education

University Of Utah, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

The Digital Multimedia Library for Health Sciences Education project is developing and implementing services for a national, publicly accessible database designed to facilitate uploading, cataloging, retrieval, and metadata exchange of multimedia items. A prototype system is under construction based on an extensive test collection of multimedia items from K-12 schools, undergraduate colleges, and medical schools. The project team expects to form collaborations with other projects in the NSDL Program and other professional health organizations to broaden the collection of multimedia and the collection's metadata standards. Other activities that the project team is engaging in include: development of policies and procedures for protecting and defining intellectual property rights; maintenance of a quality assurance system to ensure that high quality and relevant items are maintained in the database; and the implementation of "best practices" for incorporating multimedia into popular course authoring tools. The National Library of Medicine expects eventually to employ the project's services to host a Digital Multimedia Library database.