SCIENCE & ENGINEERING NEWS
San Diego, CALIF. — A national online digital library, considered a key step toward addressing the digital divide, moved closer to reality recently with 29 awards totaling some $13.5 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The awards aim to create, organize and install high-quality education resources onto the Internet.
The awards from NSF’s National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL) program may strongly affect K-12 and undergraduate education by providing anytime, anywhere access to a rich array of authoritative and reliable interactive materials and environments, according to Lee Zia, NSDL program officer at NSF.
The awards for 2000 range in size from $160,000 to $840,000 over two years. Some of the newly funded projects focus on gathering and organizing content in areas such as geosciences, life sciences, engineering and mathematics. Others will develop the processes to manage and coordinate that content in the library’s core collections, and develop services for users and collection providers.
“NSF’s goal is to provide access to the very best standards based, inquiry driven learning for K-12 and undergraduate students,” says Judith Sunley, interim assistant director for Education and Human Resources. “The NSDL also will serve as a platform to enhance the professional development of teachers and faculty.”
The program continues ongoing efforts of the national, multi- agency Digital Libraries Initiative begun in 1994, which has involved NSF, the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and other federal agencies.
For more information see: http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/ehr/due/programs/nsdl/
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