In September, CS Senior Research Associate Dean Krafft (with PIs from collaborating schools) gave a lunch talk on the National Science Digital Library project before the U.S. House Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Caucus
( http://www.stemedcaucus.org ).
In attendance were Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO), and NSF Deputy Director Kathie Olsen, who all made brief introductory remarks, and about 60 House, Senate, and NSF staffers. Krafft presented the goals of the NSDL, which are based on the Fedora digital object repository architecture developed at Cornell by Sandy Payette and Carl Lagoze. He talked about using Fedora to build a "web of informational context" around science resources, helping teachers to select appropriate resources for the classroom and understand how to use them. The goal is to create a "dynamic, living library," with researchers, faculty, teachers, and other users all contributing information about science resources back to the library.