Digital Library Services for American Indians

American Indian Higher Education Consortium, Alexandria VA

Investigators

Abstract

Building on the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Virtual Library Project (http://www.communitytechnology.org/aihec_vl/), this project is organizing and convening two task force meetings and a larger national conference that will result in a plan of action for coordinating and leveraging the research, development, and training activities involving digital libraries and advanced technologies within AIHEC and the related activities evolving in the community of grantees of NSF's National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) program. Participants in the conferences will include faculty and administrators from tribal colleges, librarians, technology experts, experts in Native American culture and learning, and leaders of selected NSDL projects. Goals of the project include: -- determining and implementing strategies for making the NSDL more accessible, meaningful, and useful to American Indians; -- providing opportunities for tribal colleges to participate in and inform the NSDL during its early development and into the future; and -- creating and extending metadata and classification schemes that incorporate the cultures and views of various American Indians and Alaska Natives. AIHEC is conducting the project in collaboration with the Alliance for Community Technology at the University of Michigan's School of Information, which has supported the development of the AIHEC Virtual Library with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.