DLESE Program Center 2007 Work Plan

University Corporation For Atmospheric Res, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

This request for the final year of the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) seeks support to: 1) transition DLESE to a new business model, 2) maintain essential DLESE services to the geoscience education community during this transition period, and 3) insure access to the educational resources contained in DLESE collections beyond the funding period. This work plan outlines the tasks and activities necessary to maintain, handover, and preserve key facets of the library: Library Content, Library Operations, and Library Services. Necessary management and administration tasks will be conducted to oversee the final year of operations and the successful transition of the library to a new operating environment. This effort targets a key challenge facing many NSF-funded educational initiatives and digital library projects: the challenge of long-term sustainability. It is anticipated that the approaches and strategies developed here can serve as a model for other NSF programs. A second key challenge that is addressed in this proposal is one of organizing critical technical infrastructure in such a way that it can be transferred to another organization to provide the continued availability of the library. Finally, with the open-source approach of DLESE development, processes and infrastructure components will continue to be available for others to use and build upon. The results of this effort will allow the content and services of DLESE to continue to be leveraged by other groups in the geoscience education community.