Adding Value to the NSDL by Integrating it into Academic Libraries

The California Digital Library was awarded a two-year National Science Foundation grant, beginning October 1, 2003 to build on and enhance the National Science Digital Library. The grant was completed in August, 2006.

Abstract: This Targeted Research project is conducting market research that evaluates what content and services the NSDL needs to offer to attract and thus support itself at least in part with subscriptions paid by academic libraries. A second strand of activity is developing a prototype service that integrates NSDL into the foundational science collections managed by libraries. The prototype includes tools that enable libraries to create views of their integrated science collections customized to the needs of different patrons. Work on this aspect of the project is informing the modifications that the NSDL and its collection providers may need to make to their technical architectures to enable them to better support integration into academic library collections, thus enhancing NSDL's value in the library market. This project leverages the considerable digital library infrastructure and expertise that resides with the California Digital Library (CDL) and the ten University of California research libraries. Because these libraries operate highly diverse technical environments, service deployment and evaluation is taking place in a test bed setting representative of the heterogeneous technical environments that characterize academic libraries in general.

Goals and Deliverables

Goals: The key goals are to advise the NSDL on sustainability options and to demonstrate how NSDL collections can be integrated with other academic library collections and services (e.g., commercial journal article databases).

Deliverables:

• Strand 1: Market Research
  • Report sent to NSF (concluded in July 2005) that includes:
    1. Market audit
       • overview of business models
       • competitive evaluation of Web science portals
       • user needs survey of academic librarians
       • summary analysis of NSDL's value proposition in the marketplace and model for sustainability
    2. User needs assessment — July 1, 2004: [PDF]
    3. Functional and technical specificiations for integration of tools, content and services
• Strand 2: Build Prototype
  • Phase 1. Formal report that is an evaluation of existing products and technologies — August 15, 2005: [PDF]
  • Phase 2. Build a subject-based gateway/portal that allows users to seach across collections — This initial (alpha) prototype demonstrates how NSDL collections may be integrated with commercial licensed content in a metasearch environment. You may view this PowerPoint presentation which gives an overview of the portal's functionality. If you wish to see it in action, please contact Heather Christenson.
  • Phase 3. Review and evaluation of the prototype, including report on user needs assessment and functional spec
  1. Assessment report — June 26, 2006: [PDF]
  2. Functional spec — [PDF]
  • Phase 4. Extend the prototype's functionality, scalability, and range of services
  • Final Report
  • Report with Appendices — [PDF]
  • Report — [PDF]
    • Appendix I: Functional Requirements: NSDL Metasearch Instance — [PDF]
    • Appendix II: CDL MetaLib Access through XML (MAX) Specification — [PDF]
    • Appendix III: Metasearch Basic Flow: User Interface Code Diagram — [PDF]
    • Appendix IV: Plan for Documentation of Production Metasearch Service — [PDF]
    • Appendix V: Earth Sciences Metasearch Portal Usability Testing — [PDF]

For more information, see Laine Farley's presentation at the Digital Library Federation Fall Forum, November 2003.

Project Team

Sponsors