In acknowledging the growing network of teaching excellence and innovative scholarship at all levels fostered by the NSDL community Representatives Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) and Mark Udall (D-CO), co-chairs of the House STEM Caucus, have invited the National Science Digital Library to present an educational session for the Caucus in Washington on September 7, 2005. NSDL's efforts are recognized as being vital to developing a workforce that will thrive in an age of information and technology.

The U.S. House and Senate STEM Caucuses were established by Reps. Ehlers (R-MI) and Udall (D-CO) and by Senators Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Dick Durbin (D-I) to promote and improve all areas of science and math education including K-12, higher education, and to address U.S. global competitive workforce issues in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. The House and Senate STEM Caucuses (http://www.stemedcaucus.org) call attention to K-16 science and math education, provide information to members of Congress, and seek to secure critical funding for science and math education.

For more information contact Kaye Howe [kaye@ucar.edu].
Related Link: http://www.stemedcaucus.org

Standards are the constantly changing statements of what students should know and be able to do at different stages in their education. Achievement standards have become a common fixture in the current education landscape.

JES & Co., a non-profit organization dedicated to the education of youth (http://www.jesandco.org/), has been funded through NSDL to make online standards usable in facilitating educational progress by developing the Achievement Standards Network (http://www.jesandco.org/ASF/default.asp). JES & Co reports that state standards have been entered in the ASN database. The development team has been concentrating on data consistency and benchmarks granularity. The XML/RDF download version 1.2 of the science standards is due to be released today.

Draft documentation for the Achievement Standards Network including version 1.2 schemas, schemes and application profiles for standards documents and standards statement can be found at http://eg2.ischool.washington.edu/gemx/about/asnDocumentation-6-23-05.

At the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), held in New Orleans in June, the Achievement Standards Network was chosen as the cornerstone product in the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) 2005 Toolkit. Five states will lead the development of the SETDA 2005 standards and assessment toolkit. In the fall, all 50 states will join the project at the Annual SETDA convention. In 2006, states will be given the toolkit for free and will be able to submit, display, and publish state standards using the ASN:SETDA toolkit.
Related Link: http://www.jesandco.org/

The MicrobeLibrary is growing! Additional resources this summer include:
- Microbiology Educational journal vol. 6: features out-come based cognitive research in student learning;
- Focus on Microbiology Education (FOME): an annual review issue of books, multimedia programs and websites (available Aug. 05);
- Curriculum activities: nine classroom and laboratory activities;
- Visual resources: thirty-six images and animations.

All resources are peer-reviewed. Visit - http://www.MicrobeLibrary.org to access these resources and many more. Access to the visual collection is free. Viewing all other resources requires a subscription of $25 for ASM Members and $50 for non-members. To learn more about subscribing, go to http://estore.asm.org and look for MicrobeLibrary. The American Society for Microbiology is a founding partner of the BiosciEdNet or BEN Collaborative http://www.biosciednet.org/portal/.
Related Link: http://www.MicrobeLibrary.org

Robert E. Kahn, President and CEO, Corporation for National Research Initiatives reflects on D-Lib's ten-year impact in his editorial: "The magazine has proven to be an important source of timely and relevant information about digital libraries in particular and, more generally, of information production, consumption and management."

The Featured Collection for the July/August anniversary issue (http://www.dlib.org/) is the Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL) contributed by Kizer Walker and John M. Saylor, Cornell University. KMODDL has been funded through the NSF NSDL Program, Cornell University Library (CUL), and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Collaborators include the Cornell faculty in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics and the Museum of Science (MoS) in Boston.

"KMODDL is a pedagogical space designed for use by teachers and researchers, as well as students at a range of educational levels, and other learners, young and adult." (http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/07featured-collection.html)

The tenth anniversary issue also contains nine articles and reports from the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2005.
Related Link: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/07featured-collection.html

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/arms/07arms.html
In this article Bill Arms looks at "digital libraries - or the digital library - from three viewpoints: an organizational view, a technical view, and the view of the user. From an organizational viewpoint, the world clearly consists of many separate digital libraries. From the user's viewpoint, this distinction is less clear."

In advocating for more emphasis on "holistic" evaluation of digital libraries from a user's viewpoint he concludes that, "About twenty years ago, independent computer networks began to merge into the single unified Internet that we take for granted today. Perhaps now is the time for digital libraries to strive for the same transition, to a single Digital Library."
Related Link: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/arms/07arms.html

http://www.engadget.com/
Do you experience techno-longing on a regular basis? Read about, or share facts and foibles concerning the latest high-tech gee-gaws at "Engadget."
Related Link: http://www.engadget.com/