The National Science Digital Library

The National Science Digital Library serves as a nexus for educators, researchers, policy makers and the public

The National Science Digital Library was founded by the National Science Foundation in 2000 as its online library of exemplary resources for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and research. NSDL offers an organized point of access to a wealth of online educational resources and services. The NSDL Data Repository based on Fedora connects end users with over 2.5 million digital resources that promote active, inquiry-based teaching and learning. Over 3 million users spent 30 minutes or more at the NSDL main portal and at related discipline-specific pathway web sites during the last year.

NSDL visitors looked for resources, participated in web seminars, downloaded publications and materials, and blogged to ask questions and investigate interdisciplinary educational and scientific ideas. Fedora has made it possible for NSDL to create an online environment of context and resource contribution with tools like Expert Voices, an open source blogging system based on Word Press. Users can add both resources and information about those resources to the NSDL Fedora-based data repository through their blog posts. Plugins to the NSDL data repository add context to existing library resources as well as adding new resources to the Expert Voices collection. The small NSDL logo in blogs indicates that bloggers have elected to add new content by creating links to resource records in the NSDL Data Repository as a way of giving readers additional rich information about their ideas. Plans for the future include releasing an open source software package for educational digital library builders that includes these open source tools. The NSDL Fedora-based Data Repository API will be bundled with open source wiki and blog plug-ins designed to enable a new kind of dynamic digital library with built-in tools for empowering users as contributors.