February 2004 -- AskNSDL will be featured as the "Ask a Scientist or Engineer" service for the NSF's Excellence in Science, Technology, and Mathematics Education (ESTME) Week website (URL to be announced), as well as at Equations '04, the March 16 ESTME Week exposition in Washington, D.C. In preparation for this event NSDL is enhancing the AskNSDL service by growing the base of experts who answer user questions. ESTME Week is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education as a celebration of science and technology during the week of March 15-20.

"Experts" can sign up to answer questions related to specified areas of science, mathematics, or technology; educational resources and practices in these disciplines; or about NSDL itself. Project PIs and staff, scientists, graduate students, librarians, educators, and others are encouraged to share their knowledge with students and teachers who will be sending their inquiries during ESTME week and beyond. It is easy to register as an expert and requires only as much time as you prefer to commit in responding to the questions that you choose to answer. To register, go to http://asknsdl.askvrd.org and click on the "experts" tab. Select "register as an expert" and follow the instructions. To facilitate your approval as an expert, please mention that you are affiliated with an NSDL project in the "Credentials/Bio" field. Please assist our recruiting efforts by sharing this call for experts with appropriate non-NSDL colleagues as well. Contact Susan Van Gundy (303/ 497-2946 or vangundy@ucar.edu) for more information.
Related Link: http://asknsdl.askvrd.org

February 2004 -- Scientists and bird enthusiasts can learn a lot by knowing where the birds are. Now that winter has gripped much of the continent, what are our birds doing? Bird populations are dynamic, they are constantly in flux. We want to take a snapshot of North American bird populations and YOU can help us. Everyone's contribution is important. It doesn't matter whether you identify, count, and report the 5 species coming to your backyard feeder or the 75 species you see during a day's outing to a wildlife refuge. Your data can help us answer many questions:
- How will this winter's snow and cold temperatures influence bird populations?
- Where are the WINTER finches and other irruptive species?
- Will late winter movements of many SONGBIRD and waterfowl species be as far north as they were last year?
Find out how to participate at http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/
Related Link: http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/

February 2004 -- AskNSDL will be featured as the "Ask a Scientist or Engineer" service for the NSF's Excellence in Science, Technology, and Mathematics Education (ESTME) Week website (URL to be announced), as well as at Equations '04, the March 16 ESTME Week exposition in Washington, D.C. In preparation for this event NSDL is enhancing the AskNSDL service by growing the base of experts who answer user questions. ESTME Week is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education as a celebration of science and technology during the week of March 15-20.

"Experts" can sign up to answer questions related to specified areas of science, mathematics, or technology; educational resources and practices in these disciplines; or about NSDL itself. Project PIs and staff, scientists, graduate students, librarians, educators, and others are encouraged to share their knowledge with students and teachers who will be sending their inquiries during ESTME week and beyond. It is easy to register as an expert and requires only as much time as you prefer to commit in responding to the questions that you choose to answer. To register, go to http://asknsdl.askvrd.org and click on the "experts" tab. Select "register as an expert" and follow the instructions. To facilitate your approval as an expert, please mention that you are affiliated with an NSDL project in the "Credentials/Bio" field. Please assist our recruiting efforts by sharing this call for experts with appropriate non-NSDL colleagues as well. Contact Susan Van Gundy (303/ 497-2946 or vangundy@ucar.edu) for more information.
Related Link: http://asknsdl.askvrd.org

February 2004 -- The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) collection grows to over 3200 items with the addition of high-quality videos, interactive tutorials, animations, and other curricular resources including hundreds of videos from the award-winning "NeuroLogic Exam: An Anatomical Approach" Web site created by Paul D. Larsen, M.D. and Suzanne S. Stensaas, Ph.D. and animations created by the University of Utah's Knowledge Weavers (KW) project.

More information about the HEAL Project, as well as free access to the multimedia collections, is available at http://www.healcentral.org.
Related Link: http://www.healcentral.org

February 2004 -- More than 200 institutions are registered for the spring 2004 LibQUAL+(TM) survey (http://www.libqual.org/). The survey will be offered in several languages: French Canadian, Continental French, Dutch, Swedish, British English, and American English. Two workshops for prospective participants were offered in January. More than 40 international participants attended the workshop hosted by Glasgow University for the European participants and more than 120 US participants attended the workshop in San Diego. The possibility of benchmarking at the international level will be further tested this year as LibQUAL+(TM) expands the pool of participants across five European countries and the first library participating from Australia in addition to continuing participation from North America (US and Canada).
Related Link: http://www.libqual.org/

February 2004 -- Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues announces the availability of resources for planning digital collections. Compiled for a workshop at Southwestern University in 2003 with an emphasis on practicality and brevity, they are appropriate for people with various backgrounds, such as content experts, IT professionals, and librarians. The documents include a list of key questions, and annotated lists of exemplary digital collections, and of web-based resources. Members of the NSDL community who share their expertise with people involved in planning digital collections may find the documents useful. Dr. Elizabeth R. Blackmer (blackmere@wlu.edu), the Alsos contact person, welcomes suggestions and comment. Related Link: http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmere/NSDL/Planning_Digital_Collections.htm
Related Link: http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmere/NSDL/Planning_Digital_Collections.htm

February 2004 -- (More user details TK on this--CT) Anything attached to an email like an image or a graphic will be filtered out of plain text messages in digest mode. People who are subscribed to plain text who wish to see attachments should change their settings in the Mail man subscription manager.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/

February 2004 -- Communication strategies for the current NSDL Core Integration Middle School Area of Emphasis development phase include identifying and addressing emerging communication needs around this initiative. A new monthly publication entitled NSDL Focus On Education will support NSDL's educational goals by disseminating a features publication focused towards an emerging audience primarily interested in educational issues.

The goal for NSDL Focus On Education is to provide monthly information to educators about what's new and useful in NSDL. In addition to repurposing content like items from the Resource of Interest Exhibit, NSDL Focus On Education will publish user tips to help teachers learn how to use the NSDL. A "Question of Interest" will be highlighted from Ask NSDL each month. The audience for NSDL Focus On Education will be a broad community of educators as well as other users and supporters. NSDL outreach activities at education meetings and conferences will encourage participants to sign up for NSDL Focus On Education as a way to stay informed about NSDL's education programs.

Ideas for generating content for NSDL Focus On Education include asking NSDL education groups to take responsibility for specific issues. Format for a NSDL group NSDL Focus On Education issue might consist of a short article highlighting something of educational interest and suggesting new Resources of Interest to go with the article. Asking the NSDL community to volunteer by suggesting topical issues relating to conferences like NSTA and others, would be of current interest to subscribers in specific months.

NSDL Focus On Education will repurpose the NSDL publishing system to distribute the newsletter via email to a targeted list of internal and external subscribers, online through NSDL.org news and exhibits, as an RSS feed for use by other web sites such as the Middle School Portal, and as XML for OAI harvest by the NSDL Metadata Repository.

The premiere issue of NSDL Focus on Education will be distributed to the NSDL mail list on March 1, 2004 and will be available online at NSDL.org. Subsequent issues of NSDL Focus On Education will be emailed to subscribers. Subscription details will be available in the first issue.

Co-editors for NSDL Focus on Education are Carol Terrizzi (clt6@cornell.edu 607-255-2702), NSDL Communication Director, and Susan Van Gundy (vangundy@ucar.edu 303-497-8336), NSDL Education and Outreach Director. Ideas and suggestions are welcome.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/

February 2004 -- Materials Digital Library (MatDL) principal investigators will be presenting information about different aspects of the project during Session BB2: Computational Materials Science and Engineerings of Symposium BB: Educating Tomorrow's Materials Scientists and Engineers at the upcoming Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring Meeting (http://www.mrs.org/meetings/spring2004/) to be held April 12-16 in San Francisco. The symposium will focus on recent advances in teaching, learning, and curriculum in materials science and engineering. Presentations will include: Introduction to Modeling and Simulation: a Multidisciplinary Approach to Computational Materials Education by Adam Clayton Powell; Materials Digital Library: Enabling Laboratory Experience in a Large Freshman Class by Donald R. Sadoway; The Materials Digital Library and the NSF National Science Digital Library Program by Laura M. Bartolo; and Teaching Computational Materials Science for Nanoscale Science and Engineering by Sharon C. Glotzer.
Related Link: http://www.mrs.org/meetings/spring2004/

February 2004 -- You are cordially invited to register at this time for the fifth annual Web-Wise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World, (http://webwise2004.lib.uic.edu/) to be held March 3-5 in Chicago. The conference is sponsored annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and is co-hosted this year by the University of Illinois at Chicago. This year's theme is "Sharing Digital Resources". Sessions will focus on the different meanings and implications of "sharing" in the digital environment-from technical issues of interoperability to the formation of new partnerships to reach larger audiences. A number of innovative digital projects will be highlighted both in plenary sessions and in demonstrations during long breaks that provide opportunities for conversation and networking. The target audience is all those involved in the creation and use of digital resources, including library, museum, archives and public media professionals, systems scientists and educators.
Related Link: http://webwise2004.lib.uic.edu/

February 2004 -- The NSDL was introduced at the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) Workshop II held on January 26-27 at the Access Grid Center of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications NCSA, adjoined to NSF in Arlington, Va. The Access Grid system allowed participants to work with (discussions and presentations) HASTAC collaborators in England, Australia, and at various U. S. locations in synchronous real time giving attendees a real sense of presence.

The following are links to the main AccessGrid webpage and the node directory: http://www.accessgrid.org

HASTAC was founded on the belief that the future of cyberinfrastructure must be driven by creative discovery across disciplinary divides. NSDL will be represented on the HASTAC steering committee.
Related Link: http://www.accessgrid.org

February 2004 -- http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?nsf04542. In FY2004 NSDL will again support projects in the Services and Targeted Research tracks, but will replace the Collections track with a Pathways track. Within the Services track, two particular types of projects will be strongly encouraged: (1) selection services and (2) usage development workshops.
Related Link: http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?nsf04542

February 2004 -- http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-04.htm The February issue includes a round-up of news and bibliography from the past month as well as offering some predictions for open-access developments in 2004, and examining reasons why open access is progressing more slowly in the humanities than the natural sciences.
How to subscribe and unsubscribe to the newsletter and discussion forum http://www.arl.org/sparc/soa/index.html
The archive of back issues is open to non-subscribers
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm
Related Link: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-04.htm

February 2004 -- http://www.digitalpromise.org/ The Omnibus Appropriations bill which passed recently includes a $100,000 appropriation to the Federation of American Scientists for the Digital Promise Project to begin development of an interactive, simulation-based training system for first responders and Emergency Medical Services personnel facing a mass casualty incident. This prototype will be a vivid example of the kinds of innovative learning tools that would be supported by a future DO IT.

To SUBSCRIBE to DOIT e-announcements, send an email to digital_promise-request@lists.fas.org with "subscribe" in the body of the message.
Related Link: http://www.digitalpromise.org/

February 2004 -- http://www.centerdigitaled.com/converge/?pg=magstory&id=79935 More than 2 million American children ages 6-17 have their own personal websites today, a broad new Internet survey shows. According to data released today from "Children, Families and the Internet," a survey by Grunwald Associates, this figure represents fully 10 percent of the 23 million kids who have Internet access from home today -- a threefold increase since 2000.--Converge, Center for Digital Education, December 2003
Related Link: http://www.centerdigitaled.com/converge/?pg=magstory&id=79935

February 2004 -- http://www.pinheadinstitute.org/EncyclopediaPress.htm A symposium, convened by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Pinhead Institute and Telluride Institute, will discuss the need for a biodiversity census of our planet with invited scientists next month--how they envision it being accomplished, and why it hasn't been accomplished yet.
Related Link: http://www.pinheadinstitute.org/EncyclopediaPress.htm

February 2004 -- "With the cooperation of Stanford University, Google now plans to digitize the entire collection of the vast Stanford Library published before 1923, which is no longer limited by copyright restrictions. The project could add millions of digitized books that would be available exclusively via Google...."--By John Markoff, "The Coming Search Wars," New York Times, February 1, 2004
Related Link: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html