NSDL Collections: Focus, Contribute, Tools & Assessment

This poster provides information on 1) tools and methods for accessioning
a collection, 2) producing quality metadata and 3) understanding the new
scope and focus of the NSDL collection.

The scope of and focus of the NSDL collection is evolving to emphasize
teaching and learning materials that lead to impacts in education and the
classroom. As a result, this focus tends to favor resources that are
active, use inquiry, authentic learning and real-time data, experiences
and situations. This also means the Quality Guidelines of the NSDL
Collection Development Policy are more important than ever. Come learn
about these guidelines and view a collections assessment that indicates
the distribution of NSDL holdings.

In NSDL, a collection contains item-level metadata for individual
resources (URLs) in the collection.  For collections that are approved,
the NSDL Data Repository (NDR) accepts item-level metadata via
•       Direct communication with the NDR API
•       Through a hosted or locally installed NSDL Collection System (NCS)
•       Via OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)
•       Via RSS

While any metadata format can be used in the above methods, only
item-level metadata that is provided in the correct XML format of NSDL_DC
is discoverable at the main library site of NSDL.org. Learn strategies and
how-to information on when to use the above methods and how.

To support the discovery and re-use of NSDL materials, it is vital to
describe resource effectively and appropriately. Come and learn the top 5
actions you can take to improve your metadata to support the NSDL scope
and focus. This includes: the use of controlled vocabularies, educational
standards, writing a better description, keywords and the cataloging
experience (producing valid XML, training catalogers).