Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scripps Institution of Oceanography are teaming up on the Hawaiian Research Vessel Kilo Moana to study the Samoan Hotspot. They named their expedition ALIA after the ancient twin-hulled canoe that Samoan Warriors used to explore the SW Pacific. The Kilo Moana left Pago Pago on April 4 with a crew of science warriors with an ambitious plan to study active and extinct underwater volcanoes along the chain of Samoan of islands. A lively daily web narrative of their adventures will be updated by High Tech High student crew members working in eight hour shifts. The site features up-to-the minute pictures reports, and data Check it out: http://earthref.org/ERESE/projects/ALIA/
Related Link: http://earthref.org/ERESE/projects/ALIA/

The NSDL Collection has grown to over 826,372 records. On April 19, NSDL's Core Integration (CI) will roll out a new search service that has the ability to more efficiently filter those records, and direct users to specific STEM resources through NSDL project portals.

Using the new search service an NSDL project could decide to filter out a particular collection that does not make sense for their users, or create web pages to translate their user requests to more focused searches.

The new search service is based on REpresentational State Transfer (REST). REST service requests can be expressed as URLs, and the new search results, in XML, have been redesigned to make it easy for downstream services to present search results that serve their users. Moreover, the new REST search service allows search service consumers to manipulate the rankings of search results to meet their needs, while simplifying maintenance and upkeep. NSDL CI will continue to improve the new REST service with plans in place to add features such as spell checking in subsequent releases.

The new REST search service will be available and in production on Tuesday, April 19. Full documentation will be available soon. For more details, or if you have questions, send a note to search@nsdl.org. SDLIP and WebDAV search services will not be updated after Tuesday, May 3.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org

The 2005 NSDL Annual Meeting will be held November 16-18 (Wed.-Fri), 2005 at the Westin Hotel in Denver, Colorado.

Hosting the NSDL Annual meeting in different venues each year facilitates broader participation from project staff across NSDL. Program details and a Call for Participation will be available soon. Please mark your calendars so that you can attend to discuss your work with other NSDL community members, and to participate in addressing important NSDL-wide issues.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org

The NSDL Middle School Portal at ENC (http://enc.nsdl.org) has gotten a face lift! On this site, middle school teachers will find online resources for instruction and professional development that have been selected from the National Science Digital Library. When you enter the science, mathematics, or technology pathway on the site, you can browse through resource lists organized by topic and take an in-depth look at how digital resources can help you teach specific STEM concepts. A search for resources by state standards is coming soon. Come and take a look!
Related Link: http://enc.nsdl.org

The 2005 Annual Report is taking a fresh look at the ways that NSDL is having an impact in the following areas: Evaluation; Using Digital Resources in the Classroom; Information Science and Digital Library Technology; Community Building; Libraries and Museums, and; by Audience, Discipline, and Geographic Area. If you would like to contribute highlights from your project that illustrates impact in any of these areas please call Carol Minton Morris at 607 255-2702, or email 100-200 word summaries to clt6@cornell.edu.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org

Finding out about who's doing what, where, just got easier. Post your project's event information at http://nsdl.org/community/calendar.php.
Related Link: http://nsdl.org/community/calendar.php

http://www.EEWeek.org
One new feature recently added to the EE Week website (www.EEWeek.org) is Ask A Scientist or Engineer, which is a National Science Digital Library service that allows students, parents and educators to ask specific science, environmental, and technology questions via email or a web form through http://ask.nsdl.org. These questions are then answered by scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and other related professionals from the National Science Foundation and other participating agencies and professional associations. Encourage students and educators to use this free service during National EE Week and beyond!
Related Link: http://ask.nsdl.org; http://www.EEWeek.org

Register now for the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2005; Digital Libraries: Cyberinfrastructure for Research and Education will be held June 7-11, 2005 in Denver, Colorado http://www.jcdl2005.org/. Contact: info@jcdl2005.org for more information.
Related Link: http://www.jcdl2005.org/

In 1935 Cornell's Lab of Ornithology recorded the last live footage of the extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker. In 1999, Louisiana State University graduate student David Kulivan reported that he saw a pair of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the Pearl River region of Louisiana. Kulivan's sighting led to renewed efforts to find the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, including a 2002 expedition funded by Zeiss. Experts associated with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and The Nature Conservancy were able to confirm the sighting. NPR reports today that, "The rare bird, declared extinct, is alive in a nature reserve in Arkansas." Read the story here: http://www.npr.org/. Download historical footage of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker here: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/
Related Link: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-03-18-a.html
An article in the XML Cover Pages describes the Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (Fedora) and its broader impact. "Fedora software demonstrates how distributed digital information management can be deployed using web-based technologies, including XML and web services."
Related Link: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-03-18-a.html

http://edmarketing.apple.com/adcinstitute/?p=48
In 2000, the University of Michigan inadvertently gathered data on students' use of the web that indicated a 'new generation' of students based on their use, resources and support of information technology at the University of Michigan. UM officials wondered if they had stumbled on the 'net generation' they had heard so much about.

In the short report titled "Finding the Net Generation" you can see why University of Michigan thought that they might have found evidence for the existence of a 'net generation,' and how you can use their techniques to discover whether or not your students fit that pattern.
Related Link: http://edmarketing.apple.com/adcinstitute/?p=48

http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/699
A paper by Marty Kurth, Greg Nehler and Rick Silterra entitled "Using Controlled Vocabularies to Manage Resource Relationships: The KMODDL Experience " was submitted to the Dublin Core 2005 conference, written about the NSDL and IMLS-funded Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL) project (http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu) metadata planning and implementation. It is a good example of what intelligent project metadata should accomplish. The preprint is available in the Cornell University Library DSpace collection at the URL above.
Related Link: http://kmoddl.library.cornell.edu

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo.
On April 10, the US-based Discovery Channel broadcast a BBC Science/Discovery co-production of a docudrama entitled "Supervolcano". It has been broadcast in the UK and will be shown in other countries in the next month. The drama depicts a near-future cataclysmic eruption from the Yellowstone magmatic system. Like no other volcano movie you've ever seen... compelling, full of science, and containing plausible technical details and eruptive scenarios, it's worth a look. It also presents a fairly realistic portrayal of the kinds of scientific and political issues that would emerge during the prologue to any large caldera-forming eruption worldwide. The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory has prepared a webpage of questions and answers in specific response to the drama.
Related Link: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo

http://www.macilife.com/2005/04/web-work-in-progress-on-monday-always.html
When web sites go live they often contain pages that are less than . . . written. A search tip for finding some amusing examples.
Related Link: http://www.macilife.com/2005/04/web-work-in-progress-on-monday-always.html