What we learned while building DLESE

Katy Ginger (ginger@ucar.edu) http://www.dlese.org/Metadata

Metadata Architect, Meteorologist, Instructional DesignerDLESE Program Centerhttp://www.dlese.org/Metadata/presentations/2004/lessons-learned.ppt

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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

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Why DLESE

Initiatives seeking to change geoscience education

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To improve the quality, quantity, and efficiency of teaching and learning about the Earth at all educational levels.

Digital Library for Earth System Education

Mission

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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)

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New Developments

• Starting to use RSS news feeds

• Creating web services

• Supporting annotation of resources

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Screen Captures Follow

Intentionally Blank

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