What we learned while building DLESE

1. What we learned while building DLESE Katy Ginger (ginger@ucar.edu) http://www.dlese.org/Metadata Metadata Architect, Meteorologist, Instructional Designer DLESE Program Center http://www.dlese.org/Metadata/presentations/2004/lessons-learned.ppt

2. What is a digital library • Managed environment of multimedia materials in digital form • Designed for a user population • Structured to facilitate content access • Equipped with aids to navigate the global network Summarized from: Mel Collier, International Symposium on Research,: Development, and Practice in Digital Libraries

3. Why DLESE Initiatives seeking to change geoscience education

4. Mission To improve the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth at all educational levels. Digital Library for Earth System Education

5. Vision • Collections of peer-reviewed teaching and learning resources • Interfaces and tools to allow exploration of Earth data sets • Services to help users effectively create and use materials

6. Organization • Program Center - build infrastructure, integrate collections and coordinate all • Data Services - integrate Earth data/tools • Evaluation Center - conduct evaluations on user needs, data access, collections, effect on teaching/ learning • Community Services - increase use and diversity • Collection activities - catalog resources

7. Operating Principles • Community governance & ownership • Respond to community input/needs • Build a federated, distributed effort • Engage users as contributors • individuals and formal collection efforts • Measure impact on learning

8. Concrete View of DLESE • Library Catalog: metadata records that provide access to resources • Collection building • Policies • Community building & outreach • Tools: for search, share, collections development and resource usage • News & email lists

9. Lessons Learned: Policies • Create and update in timely manner • Separate ‘process’ from ‘policy’ • Suggested policies • IP, Privacy, Scope, Accession/Deaccession • governance structure(streamline it) • Create guidelines that answer process questions the policies don’t (e.g. DLESE’s How to Contribute a Collection)

10. Lessons Learned: Library Catalog • Define information space; get buy-in; recognize different types of info • Define content of the library • metadata or resources • Format of library content (XML for DLESE) • Library content must play in many realms • Make certain information required (title description)

11. Lessons Learned: Collection building • Provide training for collection developers • Use a test-bed collection encompassing information space • Community cataloging does not work • Need incentive for collection contributions • provide to NSDL • searchable by collection name • have a reviewed collection • provide metadata translation services • have a What’s new page

12. Lessons Learned: Community • Who are the most important stakeholders? • library users, resource developers, collection builders, funding sources • Does the community understand the governance structure and how change can be accomplished? • Does the community understand the benefits of the digital library? • Show how community input caused the library to evolve

13. Lessons Learned: Outreach (to users) • Presentations at standard community meetings is not enough • Need incentive for user engagement • relevant, free, reviewed collection • Choose targets wisely • strategic partnerships, pilot projects, ambassadors • Support for user questions and needs (support@dlese.org)

14. Lessons Learned: Tools • Development is expensive • Open access development philosophy provides control & responsiveness to needs • Search engine is faster than Dbase queries • Flat files provide lower threshold to tool use • Collection builders don’t use OAI correctly • Data translation services are a must • Browse is important

15. Lessons Learned: News & Email Lists • Both highly used • Control and monitor email lists • prevent spam; look at multiple subscriptions • open and closed lists • Host lists for community projects who don’t have the infrastructure • Community members rather send email to DLESE than use the news posting tool

16. Technical Specifications • Lucene search engine that creates a searchable index • Java based web-apps (using Tomcat) • discovery, cataloging, sharing metadata (OAI), collection manager • JSP tags for user interface • Majordomo for email lists • LDAP for registration (registration is not required)

17. New Developments • Starting to use RSS news feeds • Creating web services • Supporting annotation of resources

18. Screen Captures Follow Intentionally Blank