January 2002-- 'The World Wide Web: Strengthening the Undergraduate Learning Environment' will be held at theUnited States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado February 8 - 10, 2002. Deadline for applications is January 10, 2002.The intent of this workshop is to introduce participants to current best practices in the use of the WWW to enhance learning in classrooms and labs of students resident on campuses. Presentations will be made by a select number of undergraduate faculty who are pioneering the use of this new technology. Sessions will also address the future of web-assisted learning from the perspective of institutional issues such as faculty development, technology advances, and facilities planning. This will be a hands-onworkshop, with all participants given opportunity to experience these new instructional models. For more Information, go to http://www.pkal.org/curricul/tech/airforce/index.html

January 2002-- *GOVERNANCE The present NSDL Assembly is comprised of the PI or appointed representative from each project funded under the following NSF programs:DLI2 - Special Emphasis on Undergraduate EducationNSDL - '00NSDL - '01If you are the PI from one of these projects and have not already done so, please vote no later than 7pm Eastern Time this coming Friday, January 4th, on the slate of Policy Committee members, per the e-mail circulated by Kaye Howe on December 20th.*INTRODUCING SUSAN JESUROGA, TECHNICAL PROJECT LIASONAnyone involved in the NSDL project knows that we face a large task of integration. Each project faces unique integration needs. As Technical Project Liaison assigned to the Core Integration Central Office at UCAR, my job is to understand your specific project integration needs, and ensure you know the right people and have the right answers to be a successful partner in NSDL. Stay tuned to the Outreach workspace on the NSDL Communication Portal http://nsdloutreach.comm.nsdlib.org where I will provide as much useful project-related information as possible. I will be contacting all of you over the next few weeks, but I can be directly reached at jesuroga@ucar.edu if you want to get started now, or to drop a line to introduce yourself. -Susan Jesuroga

January 2002-- *WIKI WEB EDITOR--'Wiki-wiki' means 'fast in the water' in Hawaiian. In the Communication Portal a 'Wiki' is a web site where anyone can easily edit any page--fast. Thanks to Gene Klotz of the Math Forum who suggested using Wiki web tools in the NSDL Communication Portal, and to Elly Cramer, who implemented a Wiki system in the Communication Portal. Homepages at http://comm.nsdlib.org/ are now Wiki web pages. After getting the password from the administrator of a Wiki web and setting up your Wiki user preferences in a CP Workspace, click on 'edit page' to make changes--instantly! For example, the Wiki web editor is being used in the Communication Portal in the User Interface and Portals Design Workspace Functional Requirements documentation. Anyone with the password to this Wiki web can make and track changes to these documents. Click on the help menu for more information or email Elly Cramer with questions. 'The Wiki Way' by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham is available through amazon.com. *THIS MONTH'S CP HOT TIP: Any news item posted to any Communication Portal Workspace goes into the que to be the top news item on the CP main portal. Send email to nsdl-request@comm.nsdlib.org and ask to have the item activated for the main page.

January 2002-- A DLESE Program Center development team (Dave Deniman, Ryan Deardorff, Katy Ginger, Marianne Weingroff) has been creating a new catalog management system that will be distributable to collection developers. The web-based tool offers four related but independent 'modules' that work together as one system to provide cataloging and record management services. These include the creation of metadata records, their accession into a library, record editing functions, and record-sharing between collections. Software engineer Dave Deniman characterizes the underlying architecture as being 'metadata-agnostic'-in other words, the system's internal components do not require any specific metadata framework and future versions will thus allow collection developers to work with their own metadata frameworks. The system is able to search and discover records using both metadata content as well as keyword searching of resource content. A resource content index is generated by utilizing the metadata record's URLs and 'drilling down' through those web pages. Initial testing will be conducted with the NSDL-funded Digital Water Education Library (DWEL) collection project and with colleagues at ADL/ADEPT. Further distribution via Source Forge is planned following the DWEL implementation. For more information, contact Dave Deniman at deniman@ucar.edu or by phone at 303-497-2651.

January 2002-- Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) is creating a science subject thesaurus for K-12 science education based on the National Science Education Standards, Benchmarks for Science Literacy, and the existing ENC science taxonomy http://enc.org/resources/browse/. The draft frameworks that correspond to the seven NSES content strands are ready for review. Science educators will meet at ENC, January through March, to start the review process. During these sessions, participants will learn about the use of science metadata and integrate this information with their knowledge of the National Science Education Standards to make this vocabulary hierarchy meaningful and useful to educators. For more information, email Kimberly Roempler at roempler@enc.org.

January 2002-- http://www.jisc.ac.uk/pub01/index.html The NSF and the Joint Information System Committee (JISC) have issued a call for proposals: 'Digital Libraries and the Classroom: Testbeds for Transforming Teaching and Learning.' Strong UK/US partnerships will be essential for any proposal. A letter of intent is due on February 1, 2002. Proposals are due on April 8, 2002.

January 2002-- In a recent study, three researchers from the Universities of Florida, Iowa, and Missouri found that women learn one-third less than men during college. The study, published in the September/October 2001 issue of the Journal of Higher Education, used test results from the College Basic Academic Subjects Examination (CBASE), which tests students in English, math, science, and social studies. The study analyzed the test results of 19,000 students at 56 four-year colleges and universities in 13 states over a five-year period. For a copy of the full report, 'How Much Do Students Learn in College? Cross-Sectional Estimates Using the College Base,' order the September/October 2001 issue of the Journal of Higher Education (Volume 72,Number 5) at: www.ohiostatepress.org/journals/jhemain.htm. --from CASE Flashpoints, Vol. 6 No. 14, December 14,2001.

January 2002-- Is there a cosmic connection? Read Beth Saulnier's feature article 'Portal Power' in the Fall issue of Cornell Engineering Magazine, or email Carol Terrizzi if you would like to receive a copy of the magazine.

January 2002-- LibQUAL+, an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) /Texas A&M; University joint research and development project, is designed to define and measure library service quality across institutions and create useful quality-assessment tools for libraries. In 1999-2000, the project's first year, 4,407 participants from 12 ARL institutions completed the LibQUAL+ protocol online. Following the analyses of these results http://www.coe.tamu.edu/~bthompson/servqbib.htm, the survey instrument was further refined and revised. In 2001, 20,416 participants from 43 campuses completed a 56-item version of the LibQUAL+ protocol. Based on these promising results, during project phase two (2001-02), library users from over 150 institutions will participate in the spring 2002 survey using a 25-item version. For further information, see http://www.arl.org/libqual/.

January 2002-- On January 13-17, 2002 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) convenes its 82nd Annual Meeting in Orlando Florida. Of specific interest is session (9) on Internet Applications for Education and Research starting at 1:55 pm on Tuesday, January 15, 2002. From the NSDL community Dave Fulker will present 'How the National SMETE Digital Library (NSDL) will Influence Internet Applications for Education and Research', Ben Domenico will present 'Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services (THREDDS),' and Christopher Klaus will present 'Educational and Research Applications of the NSDL/AVC.' Those in the area are encouraged to attend since many of the other presentations will touch on topics of interest to the NSDL community.

January 2002-- SDSC, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), and the UCSD Libraries are collaborating to create a modern Oceanography Digital Library that will enable inquiry-driven learning for both scientists and 'K through gray' users. Using materials from the SIO Library Archives and extensive scientific data sets from the SIO Geologic Data Center (GDC) as a starting point, the project will apply SDSC-developed information technologies to provide Web access to integrated scientific data and published research papers, as well as historic documents for Scripps' voyages of discovery that bring the human side of oceanography to life.--from NPACI and DSC Online, Volume 5, Issue 25, December 12,2001 http://www.npaci.edu/online/v5.25/sio_digital_library.html

January 2002-- http://enc.org/focus/horizons/document.shtm?input=FOC-002309-index Read the latest article in Kimberly Roempler's ongoing ENC Focus series 'Internet in the Classroom.'

January 2002-- http://www.dlib.org/dlib.html 'A Spectrum of Interoperability: The Site for Science Prototype for the NSDL,' William Y. Arms, Diane Hillmann, Carl Lagoze, Dean Krafft, Richard Marisa, John Saylor, Carol Terrizzi, and Herbert Van de Sompel.

January 2002-- http://www.intellidimension.com/SWB/beta/ The beta version of 'Semantic Web Bar' is primarily a platform for rich data services within the browser providing services that include collection of structured data encountered while browsing, query and inference services for web page scripts; event driven script execution, exposure of html content as structured data to user queries for the purpose of up-conversion (i.e. for harvesting), and a conversational navigation metaphor for exposing services on the web.

January 2002-- http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf0234 Find out about a new NSF education program solicitation: 'Evaluative Research and Evaluation Capacity Building.' This program could serve the NSDL community by providing an opportunity to build capacity and understanding within the NSDL and education communities. Note that faculty and collegiate instructors are explicitly targeted under 'Instructional Workforce.'

January 2002-- Your ticket to the NSDL Library Catalog.

January 2002-- 'Participation websites will be part of the next stage of the internet's evolution. Destination websites are in danger of becoming the seaside piers of the information age: vast, beautiful and elaborate constructions, condemned to a brief life . . . ' --FT.com, 'The Internet's Way Forward.' December 4, 2001

January 2002-- 'The NSDL T-shirt'--For those who did not receive a t-shirt at the All-Projects Meeting, or who could not find the right size, some additional t-shirts will be available at the end of January in sizes XXL, XL, and L. Contact Rosemary Adessa at rosemary@cs.cornell.edu.

January 2002-- http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/tour.html 'CityDesk stores your entire web site in a single file. Inside the file, you can organize articles, pictures, HTML files, and other web assets any way you want. ' --Fog Creek Software.