Second Generation Digital Mathematics Resources with Innovative Content for Metadata Harvesting and Courseware Development

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This Collections project is developing second-generation capabilities for two mathematical digital libraries that support mathematics, engineering, physics, and applied sciences education and research the "MathWorld" site at http://mathworld.wolfram.com and the "Functions" site at http://functions.wolfram.com. Functional enhancements are being added to these two comprehensive and content-rich sites, and collection and item-level metadata from these resources are being integrated into the NSDL Metadata Repository framework via maintenance of an Open Archives Initiative (OAI) server available for harvesting by the NSDL core integration group. The project team is also investigating several issues, including the potential for semantic search of functions and mathematical content, and the capability of characterizing and mapping or adding equations appearing in the physics journal literature to the "Functions" site. The project team is comprised of investigators at Wolfram Research, Inc. and faculty from the UIUC Library and Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM). Sample courseware and model problems for several TAM applied mechanics courses are incorporating content and functional components from the two sites in the collection and are being used to assess the utility of the sites in teaching and course development.