Tools: ExpertVoices

Utilizing Word Press Multi-user weblog technology, NSDL’s Expert Voices supports collaborative STEM conversations among content experts, scientists, teachers, and students from key NSDL audience groups: K12 teachers, university faculty, librarians, and technology specialists. Expert Voices’ tag line reminds users that in NSDL’s blogosphere we are “speaking of something interesting” with moderated conversations that tie NSDL repository resources to science news and information that add valuable context in order to enhance discovery, selection and use.

Expert Voices has been in use since April 2006 and has empowered NSDL users as contributors by providing technology and editorial coordination for moderated blog discussions that have explored far-reaching topics and ideas such as bone science, polar discovery, literacy and learning ideas, resources for K5 classroom teachers, real-time chemistry experiments, engineering history, and the study of how technological and natural worlds are connected in social networks. The table at left* shows the growth of Expert Voices activity, and highlights increasing numbers of links back to the library’s managed data repository from the blogosphere. Users may chose to download the NCore wordpress plugin that integrates other blog installations with the NCore data repository.

*Minton Morris, C., Cramer, E., “Embedding the Managed Repository in National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Semantic Library Services,” Proceedings of the Third International Open Repositories Conference 2008, Southampton, UK.