Philosophy behind the NCore Platform in support of the NSDL Technical Network Services
Details of NCore Tools and Services can be found at the NCore website.
NCore is the NSDL open-source suite of tools and services for creating production digital libraries, such as NSDL.org, repository systems, and content-rich STEM learning environments. A core function of the NSDL Technical Network Services (TNS) is to support, maintain, and extend this platform to meet the evolving needs of the NSDL and STEM communities.
NCore's development is guided by a number of key architectural design principles:
- Build on robust, open-source technologies and employ open vendor-neutral standards, protocols and architectures
- Follow a web-services based architecture to enable library tools and services to be easily combined and embedded in end-users' teaching and learning workflows, and used by third parties to create innovative libraries, portals, and learning applications
- Employ modular design to ensure that tools and services can be easily added, independently modified, and removed as needed without impacting other operations
- Listen to the specific needs of community members in order to identify general solutions of broad utility that can be configured to meet a wide range of educational needs across the full sweep of disciplines and audiences that make up NSDL.
The role of the NCore platform in the three tier NSDL technical infrastructure as a mediator between community-contributed collections and audience-specific portals, tools and learning applications is shown in Figure 1. The NSDL Data Repository forms the heart of NCore; the platform also consists of a number of tools and services for digital librarians and end-users, including search services, the NSDL Collection System, the Strand Map Service, the Expert Voices blogging system, and a repository-integrated wiki for collaborative authoring around NSDL resources. Most of these components are released on SourceForge under open source licenses.
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| Figure 1: The NSDL Technical Network Services architecture and existing Infrastructure |
Get a copy of the NCore Document from the NSDL Annual Meeting 2008.