Digital Library for Earth Science Education, DLESE / The National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) program comprises a set of projects engaged in a collective effort to build a national digital library of high quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational materials for students and teachers at all levels, in both formal and informal settings. By providing broad access to a rich, reliable, and authoritative collection of interactive learning and teaching resources and associated services in a digital environment, the NSDL will encourage and sustain continual improvements in the quality of STEM education for all students, and serve as a resource for lifelong learning. Though the program is relatively new, its vision and operational framework have been developed over a number of years through various workshops and planning meetings. The NSDL program held its first formal funding cycle during fiscal year 2000, accepting proposals in four tracks: Core Integration System, Collections, Services, and Targeted Research. Twenty-nine awards were made across these tracks in September 2000.

The US National Science Foundation has established a program to create a National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL). One of the subsidiary NSDL libraries under development is the National Civil Engineering Educational Resources Library (NCERL). The first phase of NCERL is the creation and collection of digital resources in three areas of civil engineeringâ geotechnical (soil), rock, and water engineering (GROW). The concept of interactivities guides the design, development, and evaluation efforts of the GROW digital collection. This article describes the salient features of GROW, defines and discusses interactivities as an emerging, integral part of teaching and learning in civil engineering education. Interactivities take place at three distinct levels: the information resource, the collection, and the context. Very simply, the concept of interactivities can be defined as the emphasis on structured representations of interactive multimedia resources. Additionally, resources are designed with rich learning tasks and organized in pedagogical collections supplemented with contextual information. Preliminary evaluation of GROW-NCERL using interactivities is briefly described.

It has often been said that the library is the heart of the university. As the central repository of recorded knowledge on campus, the library is an essential resource for scholarly activity, and one measure of the greatness of a university is its library's collections. As electronic publishing expands and universities become computer-intensive organizations, what will the academic library's role be in this dynamic, technology-driven environment? Will it still be the heart of the university? This paper examines the medium-term future (10-15 years) of electronic publishing, the emerging "electronic university," and integrated public-access computer systems. Its central theme is that the academic library can synergetically combine traditional collections and services with new computer-based information resources and services to create a unified information system. By employing this strategy, it can continue to be the heart of the evolving electronic university.

This is a presentation of 8 slides at the ASIST 2005 Annual Meeting in the session on Progress in the Design and Evaluation of Digital Libraries.

This paper surveys university libraries, special libraries, public libraries, the National Library and school libraries in Thailand about their digital collections and services.

Library Wageningen UR is a relatively small, but highly specialized academic library serving a population of about 5900 researchers and 4700 students in the life sciences. To better serve the needs of our users portal functionality has been introduced gradually to our Desktop Library. A beginning was made with the implementation of portal functionality with the development of subject oriented portal pages, where patrons will find a selection of bibliographies, core journals, reference works and selected websites. There was a need for these pages, since the list of ‘shortcuts’, was found to be too overwhelming for newcomers. However a guided selection system for the library resources failed to meet the requirements of these newcomers to help them with the selection of the right library resources to start their queries. These subject-oriented pages are XML pages generated by queries on our library catalogue. At this moment there are about 110 different subject oriented portal pages. In discussion with our customers the usefulness of these pages has always been stressed, especially for newcomers to the various specialities, but not for the researchers themselves Our second approach to the implementation of portal functionality was the possibility of personalization of library functions. ‘My library’. Personalization means in our case: selection of favourite bibliographies and databases; a virtual lending desk (services of renewals and tracking of reservations); alerts on new additions to the library catalogue and in house created bibliographies; Table of Content alerts for the majority of our journals; SDI alerts for end users on our Ovid/Silverplatter databases; and last but not least, in of May 2003 we introduced world wide access for our patrons to our collection of 4000 electronic journal and databases through EZproxy. This was a long anticipated advancement of the personalization functionality since Library Wageningen UR has a highly mobile internationally oriented client base. Currently about a third of our clientele has subscribed to the various ‘My library’ functionalities. To date we have not introduced ‘one search’ functionalities as they have become the fashion in library portals. Currently a team is working at the implementation of Metalib with SFX. This software will be integrated in the subject oriented portal pages. It is further envisioned that patrons, will be able to construct their own starting page where the customer oriented ‘myLibrary’ functionality will allow users to construct ‘myPortal’. In that case they can selected their favourite journals, reference works, websites etc… The backbone of all these functionalities is our library catalogue build on a Minisis system with custom build web interface based on open URL.

We consider ideas for a tighter integration of searching a digital library while writing a paper. A prototype system based on web services is described which allows us to explore the design space of ambient search tools to support and inspire the writing process.

This article (presented at CALIBER 2003) explores the possibilities of establishing Management and Engineering library consortia of two western Indian states - Gujarat & Maharashtra. It gives an overview of the current status of management and Engineering libraries of the region and examines the possibilities of building up information sharing system which is of great importance and central to the formation of any consortia. Proposals are made here for a model of library consortia of the 21st century in two western states of India. It focuses on the joint purchase of the resources by IIT Mumbai, IIM Ahmedabad and other engineering and management institute libraries of the region. The theoretical and practical advantages and disadvantages of this form of collaborative approach between management and engineering libraries are described.

A prototype system is available at http://pira.isrl.uiuc.edu / We consider ideas for a tighter integration of searching a digital library while writing a paper. A prototype system based on web services is described which allows us to explore the design space of ambient search tools to support and inspire the writing process. * A prototype system is available at http://pira.isrl.uiuc.edu

This is an online version of the book Digital Libraries published by the MIT Press in January 2000. The text of the book is copyrighted by the MIT Press (please see copyright notice and details at end of this abstract). Here is an excerpt from the book's Preface by the author, William Arms, dated June 2005: This online edition of Digital Libraries is an updated version of the book of the same name published by the M.I.T. Press in January 2000. I am extremely grateful to the press for giving me permission to place it online even while the book is still in print. The field of Digital Libraries is moving rapidly. Most of this book was written in 1998 and many sections are now seriously out of date. In particular: * In the few years since the book was written, there have been some major developments. Important topics that need to be updated or included for the first time include the emergence of XML, the dominance of Google, reference linking, the Internet Archive, the Open Archives Initiative, and many more. * Numerous details need to be brought up to date. * A few projects have come to an end and a few topics have proved to be less important than expected. They need to be deleted or give less emphasis. * The book does not have a bibliography, because, only a few years ago, nobody had confidence in the longevity of URLs. Now it is clear that many online collections are managed for the long term and can be cited with confidence. * Our understanding has developed. In some aspects, uncertainties have been resolved; in others the complexities seem to have grown. There is less need to be an advocate for digital libraries. Despite being out of date in these ways, the major themes and much of the material remains valuable. In particular, the importance of understanding the human and social context while carrying out technical work remains the heart of all work in digital libraries." COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This material has been placed on the Web for use by the general public, subject to the following: Copyright License This copyright license is provided by Creative Commons. The key license terms are: * Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the original author and publisher credit. * Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not use the work for commercial purposes -- unless they get the licensor's permission.