BioSciEd Net (BEN) Collaborative: Cycle 2

American Association For The Advancement Of Science, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The Biosci Ed Net (BEN) Collaborative is continuing development of a portal site and six (6) digital library collections. The BEN Collaborative is composed of 12 professional societies and coalitions for biology education with an interest in transforming the teaching and learning of undergraduate biology. The BEN portal provides users with seamless access to accurate and reliable undergraduate biology resources In this phase of the project activities include: 1) Enhancing the BEN portal site to increase security, the content and services offered to users, and to support the anticipated increase in contributors/users, collections Partners, and resources.. 2) Modifications to or development of the concurrent collections six (6) BEN Partners. These Partners include American Physiological Society (APS), Ecological Society of America (ESA), American Society for Microbiology (ASM), American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS), and Science's Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment (STKE). These developments and modifications are being done in a manner that is consistent with BEN and NSDL specifications. In addition, some Partners are developing digital library features that will be adopted by other BEN Partners and useful for other NSDL projects. 3) Increasing the number of learning objects in collections and in the BEN catalog, either through acquisition of existing collections or submissions. With prior support of the NSDL program members of the BEN Collaborative have: a) Developed one portal, two web sites, and two digital collections, including: (1) the prototype of the BEN portal, http://www.biosciednet.org/portal/; (2) the BEN documentation site, http://www.ben.e-guana.net/ ; (3) the BEN announcement site, http://www.biosciednet.org; (4) the ESA digital collection, http://www.ecoed.net/index.php; and (5) the APS digital collection, http://www.apsarchives.org/main/index.asp. In addition, the existing ASM digital collection, www.MicrobeLibrary.org, was modified for resource harvesting. b) Six hundred and eighty (680) resources have already been harvested or cataloged from APS, ASM, ESA, NABT, STKE, and SOT. In Cycle 2, we expect to harvest at least another 2,500 resources from another 8 collections or sites. These 8 collections or sites include Access Excellence, ASBMB, HAPS, Heal Education Asset Library (HEAL) at UCLA, Evolution and the Nature of Science Institute at Indiana University, International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE), the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII), and the Human Genome Project Information Web site at Oakridge. Collectively about 10,000 monthly visitors used the digital collections or web resources of BEN Partners. By 2004, we expect 20,000 monthly visitors to use the BEN digital collections.