MatDL: The Materials Digital Library Pathway

MatDL Pathway (http://matdl.org) assumes stewardship of significant content and services to support the integration of materials research and education. MatDL’s target audience is comprised of materials undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and researchers.  The MatDL consortium includes: Kent State University, MIT, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of Michigan, Purdue University, and Iowa State University.  In addition to providing a Repository, MatDL offers the materials community: 1) tools such as the MatDL Wiki (http://matdl.org/matdlwiki), to describe, manage, exchange, archive, and disseminate data among national and international government-funded materials collaborations; 2) services and content for virtual labs (http://matdl.org/virtuallabs); 3) the MatForge (http://matforge.org/) workspace for open access development of computational materials modeling and simulation tools; and 4) workspace (http://teaching.matdl.org/) for collaborative development of core undergraduate materials teaching resources.  MatDL is expanding its collaborations across the materials community through joint efforts with MIT and Carnegie Mellon University (CCLI Phase 2) and professional societies such as the international Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS).  A primary goal of MatDL is to help integrate research and education.  By offering materials educators convenient access to relevant, shared learning resources based on research, both teaching and learning within materials and cognate disciplines are positively impacted.