The Whiteboard Report

December 2002-- There is so much more to come . . . Welcome to the first release of the National Science Digital Library now at [nsdl.org]! We are proud of the contributions made by many dedicated individuals and institutions toward making the NSDL a reality. The result of their hard work is the first version of an NSDL that will evolve into an increasingly useful resource for educators, students, and the general public over the next four years of current NSF funding. Please return regularly to watch the evolution of this national treasure. We hope to inform and delight you as we continually add features to "The comprehensive source for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education." Your comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome and encouraged at feedback@nsdl.org.-- The NSDL Core Integration Team.
Related Link: [nsdl.org]

December 2002-- Available through the main NSDL portal's Help system, the AskNSDL? Service will assist NSDL visitors with questions about NSDL collections, services, and participation. AskNSDL? supports user question entry, routing and answering of questions via the Web. Questions and answers are maintained in a database that is accessible to any library user. To ask questions users must login, but have access to browsing questions without logging in. As NSDL grows over time, scalability is the driving issue in providing help desk support. To meet user requests for online personalized help as the Library grows, NSDL Core Integration has teamed with the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS), a second year NSDL project, to provide AskNSDL? to Help users with questions about using the library. This is where you come in. The NSDL needs your expertise to help create and run this service. You are the experts when it comes to knowing your collection, service, and discipline. When a user asks a question about pedagogy, math, or data visualization (or whatever the challenge), your group has the expertise to answer those questions. Your experts answer as many or as few questions as they like, and questions are limited to your designated expert area. Volunteer experts are needed in all NSDL subject areas. Experts will have the flexibility to view and choose from only those questions in their areas of expertise. By participating, you will have the opportunity to raise the visibility of your collection, identify possible gaps in your collection, and contribute your valuable knowledge to a resource that will build the overall strength of the NSDL. Contact [Yvonne Belanger], or [Susan Jesuroga] for more information about registering as an expert with AskNSDL?. There will be a breakout session presentation on AskNSDL? at the Annual Meeting (12/3, Tuesday 3:30PM, Joanne Silverstein, Virtual Reference Desk). IIS staff will be available Wednesday afternoon to provide additional information.
Related Link: Susan Jesuroga

December 2002-- "The National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) program recently made its third set of awards for projects in three basic tracks: Collections, Services, and Targeted Research. These projects are working with those funded in fiscal years (FY) 2000 and 2001 to build a national digital library of high quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational resources for students and teachers at all levels, in both formal and informal settings. By supporting widespread access to a rich, reliable, and authoritative collection of interactive learning and teaching materials and associated services in a digital environment, the National Science Digital Library will encourage and sustain continual improvements in the quality of STEM education for all students, and also serve as a resource for lifelong learning."--from "The NSF National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) Program: ["New Projects in Fiscal Year 2002"] by Lee Zia, Division of Undergraduate Education, NSF, D-Lib Magazine, Volume 8 Number 11, November 2002.
Related Link: ["New Projects in Fiscal Year 2002"]

December 2002-- Camilo Vergara, whose documentary photography are an integral part of the collection project: Visually Exploring United States Demographic and Social Change recently won a MacArthur? "genius" award [http://www.macfound.org/programs/fel/2002fellows/vergara_camilo.htm]. Vergara's work in the collection shows change over time in urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles and New York City. Examples can be found in the Camilo Vergara Urban Viewer at [http://www.leroyneiman.sscnet.ucla.edu/]. Other information about this collection project can also be found there or at [www.socialexplorer.org]. Professor David Halle at UCLA and Professor Andrew A. Beveridge at Queens College CUNY direct this project.
Related Link: [www.socialexplorer.org]

December 2002-- The US National Science Foundation has established a program to create a National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL). One of the subsidiary NSDL libraries under development is the National Civil Engineering Educational Resources Library (NCERL). The first phase of NCERL is the creation and collection of digital resources in three areas of civil engineering-geotechnical (soil), rock, and water engineering (GROW). The concept of interactivities guides the design, development, and evaluation efforts of the GROW digital collection." -- from [The Design and Evaluation of Interactivities in a Digital Library] by Muniram Budhu and Anita Coleman, D-Lib Magazine, Volume 8 Number 11, November 2002.
Related Link: [The Design and Evaluation of Interactivities in a Digital Library]

December 2002-- Cathy Manduca, Sean Fox Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College, Dave Mogk and Karen Kirk, Montana State University The Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College has developed a prototype specialized portal. The Using Data in the Classroom specialized portal addresses effective teaching methods and pedagogical approaches for using data in the classroom. Educators can find information on teaching, resource collections, and a discussion forum focused on how to effectively engage students in inquiry using data. Resource developers can find information on how educators use data in their classrooms and laboratories, recommendations from faculty for new data access tools, and scenarios of how these tools might be used in the future. Dynamically generated resource lists are an integral part of the portal. These are based on DLESE metadata records held in two DLESE collections. The SERC Library Resource Display System is used to extract relevant fields from the metadata records, add short descriptions, and generate lists. The discussion forum uses list-server and wiki services from the NSDL communication portal.-- Cathy Manduca and Sean Fox.

December 2002-- Slated to become a complete math and science access resource point, Access NSDL is a new NSDL project providing Information, resources, and tools for making collections accessible to people with disabilities. Access NSDL is on the web at [http://accessnsdl.org]. This site is co-produced by the National Center for Accessible Media and the Internet Scout Project. Please visit and send comments, suggestions, or questions to Madeleine Rothberg at the National Center for Accessible Media [madeleine_rothberg@wgbh.org].
Related Link: [madeleine_rothberg@wgbh.org].

December 2002-- The Queens Borough Public Library's exhibit From Burgh to Borough: Queens Enters the 20th Century, [http://www.queenslibrary.org/gallery/index.asp] displayed large format maps of Queens neighborhoods and of population change based upon materials from the Collections Project: Visually Exploring United States Demographic and Social Change. Directed by Professor Andrew A. Beveridge at Queens College CUNY and Professor David Halle at UCLA the project also supplied an interactive web based version on-line [http://www.socialexplorer.org/queenspop.htm] which will be part of the continuing on-line exhibit. John Hyslop of the library's local history Long Island Division and Mindy Kraszmien of the Libray gallery assembled the exhibit. More information about this collection project is available at the following websites [www.socialexplorer.org] and [http://www.leroyneiman.sscnet.ucla.edu] The Queens Public Library. [www.queenslibrary.org] collection contains over 10 million items and has the largest circulation of any public library in the United States.
Related Link: [www.queenslibrary.org]

December 2002-- Microeconomics education plays an important role in preparing future business leaders and practitioners and is a central part of social science education for students in economics and other major fields of study. Recent developments in economic theory and electronic commerce call for significant innovations in course content, design, and delivery. In addition, an emerging trend is to support the students' active participation in economic decision-making through various market institutions, including online markets, so that they can gain hands-on experience and acquire economic insights. A University of Arizona team is creating an Open Archives Initiative (OAI)-compliant collection of Microeconomics education contents--EconPort?--that incorporates experimental economics software and automated e-commerce agents. In this project, new types of digital contents, including IT-enhanced market institutions and intelligent trading systems will be implemented as software agents. The developed metadata representation of "active" objects such as software modules also has the potential of being applied in other DL collections involving software and simulation environments. Visit [www.econport.org for details].
Related Link: [www.econport.org for details].

December 2002-- Researchers at the University of Tennessee have finished phase 1--to conduct focus groups of students, GTAs, faculty, and researchers to discover how they use journals in their classes and work, and what e-journal features they value. The Phase 1 report that includes an extensive review of the research literature is available at: [http://web.utk.edu/~tenopir/nsf/] Discipline variations between engineering, physics, and chemistry have been discovered, but in all cases there is an identifiable time as either a major, or a graduate student that students are introduced to and/or begin to understand scholarly journals. Before that time they don't seem to understand their content or value.
Related Link: [http://web.utk.edu/~tenopir/nsf/]

December 2002-- The Earth Exploration Toolbook is a planned collection of Web-based step-by-step examples, called chapters, which guide educators in how to use various Earth system tools and datasets originally developed for scientists. Each chapter will provide enough experience with using a resource for teachers and students to use them in novel ways to explore and investigate issues in Earth system science. Chapters will be integrated into the Digital Library for Earth System Education [DLESE]. Once the format of chapters is refined, a template will be available for scientists and data providers to contribute additional chapters. For more information contact [matilto:tamara_ledley@terc.edu Tamara Ledley].
Related Link: [DLESE]

December 2002-- The DLESE Steering Committee welcomes four new members whose election was confirmed earlier this summer by the DLESE community. The four new members, representing ESS disciplines, the ocean sciences, information and library sciences, and the technology in education fields will attend their first Steering Committee meeting February 26-27, 2003, in Boulder, Colorado. They are: Dr. Anita S. Coleman, Ms. Annette DeCharon?, Dr. Mimi Recker, and Dr. Thomas Torgerson. Please visit "Breaking News" at [http://www.dlese.org/] to read their profiles. They will provide community input and guidance to DLESE over the course of their three-year terms. Beth Ambos, Chair of the DLESE Steering Committee, joins with the rest of the committee members in extending profound thanks on behalf of the entire DLESE community to the three members rotating off the committee for their dedicated hard work from December 1999 to the present: Barbara DeFelice?, Dartmouth College; Jim Hayes, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University; and Don Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Related Link: [http://www.dlese.org/]

December 2002-- The recent nomination and election of officers for the Sustainability Standing Committee yielded the following results: Chair - Dave McArthur?; Co-Chair - Katherine Hanson; and, Integration Officer - Rachael Bower. (SSC website - [http://sustain.comm.nsdlib.org/]. The final report of the NSDL/Educational? Publishers' Workshop is available under Drafts and Documents [http://publishers.comm.nsdlib.org]. From the report: Was the workshop productive? To cut to the bottom line, Karen Hunter, from Elsevier, mentioned three alternatives for near-term NSDL-publisher relationships: wait and see, exploration, and aggressive involvement. We think the consensus was at least to engage in substantial exploration, which will mean "establishing a working group among scientific publishers (not-for-profit and commercial) to see if there is a fit and how it might work."
Related Link: [http://publishers.comm.nsdlib.org].

December 2002-- Registration 3:00-8:00 p.m., Dec. 2: 1. NEWSTERS MEET OLDSTERS When you arrive at the conference and register, in addition to your registration packet, you will receive a nametag with a dot denoting whether you are part of a new project or a returning project. The new projects have orange and the oldsters have light blue. Projects participating in the poster session will receive a sign stating their year of joining the NSDL; projects are asked to post their membership year signs at their setups. With the signs and dots, it will be easy to tell who is a returning member and who is a new member. Introduce yourself to people! Ask questions about their projects and experiences with the NSDL! 2. THE COLLEAGUE HUNT When you register, in addition to picking up the materials listed above, you will be asked to drop your business card into a bowl. The fate of these cards shall remain a mystery until the Poster Session/ Reception Monday night! DON'T FORGET YOUR CARDS!! 3. THE [COLLABORATION FINDER] tool is a way for you to enter information about your project and locate information about other projects. Use this versatile tool to do many things like identify possible partners, technical collaborators, or needed experts! Poster Session Exploration 6:00-7:00 p.m., Dec. 2 Reception and Library Launch 6:00-8:00 p.m., Dec. 3 [Click here] to view the NSDL Annual Meeting 2002 Agenda.
Related Link: [Click here]

December 2002-- A presentation entitled "The NSF NSDL GREEN Digital Library: Green's Functions Research and Education Enhancement Network" will be given at the 2002 Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in Boston, Dec. 2 - Dec. 6 2002, by GREEN project members Gregory M. Shreve (Project Director), Kent State University, Applied Linguistics Institute; Laura M. Bartolo, Kent State University, Applied Linguistics Institute; Adam C. Powell, IV, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Materials Science and Engineering Department; and Vinod K. Tewary, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Materials Reliability Division. The presentation will be part of the "The Undergraduate Curriculum in Materials Science and Engineering" symposium, and will focus on describing the four main components (Problem Bank, Code Bank, Archive, and Teaching Bank) of the GREEN Digital Library [http://appling.kent.edu/NSDLGreen/] and the NIST CTCMS Green's Functions Working Group [http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/gf/]. The organized collection of educational resources integrates the research, education, and application of Green's functions (materials response mathematical modeling tools) to serve undergraduate and graduate communities. The Materials Research Society (MRS) [http://www.mrs.org/] is a non-profit organization that facilitates the advancement of materials research by promoting interdisciplinary communication and technical information exchange among scientists, engineers, and research managers from industry, government, academia, and research laboratories.
Related Link: [http://www.mrs.org/]

December 2002-- The Sixth International Open Forum on Metadata Registries will be held at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, NM on January 20-24, 2003. Please see the call for participation at: [http://www.metadata-standards.org/OpenForum2003] The Open Forum for 2003 will present technology standards, tutorials, and practical experience about: Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) OASIS/ebXML Registries ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registries Database Catalogs (e.g., relational DBMS/SQL) Software Development Repositories Software Component Registries Terminology and Ontological Registries, and Dublin Core Registries. A theme will be cooperation and interoperation of these technologies. The conference will highlight the management of metadata and data semantics (meaning) for web services, XML data exchanges, data management, and other applications. Special emphasis will be on using emerging web services and XML technologies together with data management and other technologiesalready in use. The tracks will gather standards developers, software developers, andpractitioners in these fields to demonstrate accomplishments and to discussexperiences. Organizations will demonstrate the use and interoperation of most of the various registries and technologies. This conference is co-sponsored by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 32, OASIS, ECOS, the federal CIO Council XML Working Group, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and others.
Related Link: [http://www.metadata-standards.org/OpenForum2003]

December 2002-- http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-MIT-Digital-Library.html The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is adding to its online offerings an electronic library for the already vast and mounting catalogue of scholarly materials born in digital form. The digital library, called DSpace, initially will be managed by a federation of eight universities, including MIT.
Related Link: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-MIT-Digital-Library.html

December 2002-- http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/willinsky/ "This paper examines contradictions in how copyright works with the publishing of scholarly journals. These contradictions have to do with the protection of the authors' interest and have become apparent with the rise of open access publishing as an alternative to the traditional commercial model of selling journal subscriptions." -- John Willinsky, First Monday, Vol. 7, Number 11, Nov. 4, 2002.
Related Link: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/willinsky/

December 2002-- http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10545.html?eb_45 Available online for free from the National Academy Press: "Preparing for the Revolution: Information Technology and the Future of the Research University." National Academy Press is the publisher for the National Academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council).
Related Link: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10545.html?eb_45

December 2002-- http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september99/kappelman/09kappelman.html Recent advances in three-dimensional digitizing hardware and software now make it possible, practical, and economical to scan complexly shaped skeletal elements and archive these materials in a digital library that in turn can provide broad access for study and research. http://policy.comm.nsdlib.org/ http://k12.comm.nsdlib.org/ http://content.comm.nsdlib.org/ http://technology.comm.nsdlib.org/ http://eduimpact.comm.nsdlib.org/ http://sustain.comm.nsdlib.org/ http://publishers.comm.nsdlib.org/ NSDL Committee Workspaces: Policy, K-12, Content, Technology, Educational Impact, Sustainability, and Publishers.
Related Link: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september99/kappelman/09kappelman.html