Reflections on NSDL by Frank Wattenberg
September 18, 2008 at 2:07 pm Brandon Muramatsu Leave a comment
Potential collaborations
One of my personal disappointments is the very limited collaboration that has been built around the NSDL. This has lead, in large part, to the morselization of NSDL that has endangered its future and compromised its present usefulness. My belief is that the key to NSDL’s success is that it is viewed as a large bundle of resources – with one single subscription and with a structure that mirrors the multidisciplinary structure of modern STEM. Although these questions are largely “business plan” issues they are sufficiently important to merit their own tiger team. This tiger team should specifically address the following potential collaborations and its membership should be drawn from national leaders in each area.
- Collaboration among professional societies. Many collections are maintained by individual professional societies whose finances are limited and who are afraid to take bold steps toward a true NSDL. Such steps could provide each society’s members with access to the digital collections of all societies. The current situation harms professional societies, their members, and both research and education.
- Collaboration among educational institutions. One possible business plan would involve an NSDL supported and maintained by a consortium of colleges and universities whose students pay access fees to the entire bundle and whose faculty, supported through NSDL, would create the content. Such a consortium would easily have the resources necessary for production and maintenance.
- Collaboration between NSDL and major private sector players, like Google.
If this author could choose an overall chairman for this tiger team-based review and a convener for this tiger team it would be someone like Hal Varian.
Conclusion
This has been a rather ambitious proposal for reviewing NSDL and for setting a new course but this is a project that is worth the effort. Many of us involved at the beginning did not yet have grandchildren but were looking forward to telling our grandchildren that we were part of the NSDL. I now have four grandchildren and they have no idea what NSDL is. Nonetheless, NSDL can do wonderful things. We can still realize the promise illustrated by the Twin Jet Nebula.
Entry filed under: Friends of NSDL. Tags: National Science Digital Library, NSDL, NSDL Reflections.
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