The 2008 NSDL Annual Meeting will be held from September 30 to October 2, 2008 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. The theme for this year’s meeting is “STEM Research and Education in Action.” Details, including the call for proposals, deadlines, meeting registration and travel support information, are available on the annual meeting website. The meeting is designed to provide a forum for sharing STEM research and education experiences, successes, and issues of interest across the entire NSDL network that includes the NSDL community as well as individuals and groups not directly affiliated with NSDL-funded projects. The success of NSDL’s annual event depends on community participation and the quality and relevancy of the sessions.

If you’ve seen the current NSF solicitation for the NSDL program, you will know that this is a transitional year for several groups including some Pathways and the Core Integration team. The current institutions that comprise the Core Integration team (Columbia, Cornell, and UCAR) do plan to respond to the solicitation. The meeting will be structured to provide plenty of time and space to discuss plans for the future, and to celebrate and share the interesting work that continues within and beyond the NSDL program.

NSDL: STEM Research and Education in Action

In 2007, the NSDL Annual Meeting highlighted a network of projects and people that had collectively reached a milestone. Presenters did not say, “When it’s built, we can….” Instead, attendees said, “What we learned was…,” and, “What we’re doing is….” Building on that ethos, the Planning Committee encourages proposals to the 2008 NSDL Annual Meeting that demonstrate how the vision of a National Science Digital Library continues to be fulfilled within, and how it contributes to, the evolving national STEM research and education infrastructure. Proposals should explore issues and report on activities that:

• Reflect cumulative experiences and provide compelling narratives about ongoing, or concluded, research (e.g., technology, education, policy) within the context of the NSDL program;

• Highlight inter-disciplinary work undertaken by NSDL projects that encompass continuums, for example, between technology developers and users, across STEM disciplines, and between public and private organizations;

• Are directly applicable to the STEM teacher and learner audiences of NSDL projects;

• Describe a vision for the role of NSDL within the evolving national STEM research and education infrastructure;

• Demonstrate the complementary contributions between STEM research and STEM education.

Please visit the NSDL Annual Meeting web site for complete information: http://annualmeeting.nsdl.org/.