The NSDL at Cornell

The National Science Digital Library

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is a long-term program of the National Science Foundation to enhance all aspects of education in science, mathematics and engineering.

The program is divided into tracks to build collections and services, and carry out targeted research, with a single core integration project to bring the parts together into a coherent whole. Cornell is a major contributor to the program, with six separate grants from the NSF.

For more information about the overall NSDL program, see the NSF's Overview.

Core Integration

The Core Integration challenge is to unite the more than 100 projects funded by the NSDL program, together with other digital library collections and services of value to scientific education, into a coherent whole. This is a collaboration among the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Columbia University and the Information Science Program at Cornell University. The team operates the NSDL main portal and the NSDL communications portal. The Whiteboard Report is an online newsletter about the NSDL.

For more information, see NSDL at Cornell: Core Integration

Targeted Research

Nuprl: Formal Digital Libraries

This project is is extending authoring tools for Formal Digital Libraries (FDL) so that they can produce semantically anchored documents suitable for the NSDL.

For more information about the research on Formal Digital Libraries, see the FDL Project.

MetaTest

MetaTest is evaluating the use and utility of manually and automatically generated metadata, and how the relative contribution of individual metadata elements to how educators use the digital library. This is a collaboration between Syracuse University and the Human Computer Interaction group at Cornell.

For more information, see the HCI web site.

Collections

Atlas

The Institute for the Study of the Continents Atlas is building a digital library to collect, organize, maintain geoscience data sets for the NSDL and to develop advanced user tools to manipulate, map, model, analyze, and visualize the collected data sets.

For more information, see Building the Digital Earth.

Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library

The Reuleaux Collection of Mechanisms and Machines is an important collection of 19th-century machine elements held by Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. It is the core of this project which incorporates still and interactive images, historical and contemporary texts, learning modules for high school and undergraduate education, simulations and novel methods of 3-D digitization.

For more information, see the Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library.

The Laboratory of Ornithology: Macaulay Library

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest open repository of recordings of animal behavior and natural history. This project brings the unique resources of the Macaulay Library online as a new part of the NSDL.

For more information, see the Macaulay Library.