Building and Contributing Collections DLESE Program Center (DPC) and Community Core Services

2 Part 1: Workshop Presenters Bryan Aivazian:  Community Services and DWEL Holly Devaul:  DLESE Program Center Ed Geary:  Community Services and DWEL Katy Ginger:  DLESE Program Center Shelley Olds:  DLESE Program Center

3 Primary Goal of DLESE Facilitate learning about Earth at all educational levels, formal and informal Facilitate learning about Earth at all educational levels, formal and informal Strategies to Achieve This Goal  Develop high quality collections  Provide access to Earth data, imagery & tools  Create discovery and distribution systems  Provide support services to create/use materials  Facilitate communication across all interests of Earth system education

4 Scope of DLESE Collection Emphasizes Earth as a System  Study of processes, states, cycles and interactions  Global and local perspectives  Interdisciplinary connections between atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, space and biosphere Emphasizes Education  Learning and teaching for improved understanding of Earth’s history, processes, and resources  Supports research and assessment activities

5 Materials in DLESE Educational materials - homework exercises, tutorials, guided inquiry sets, lesson plans, syllabi, classroom activities, curricula, modules, field trips, problem sets Assessment and pedagogical materials - exams, quizzes, self- assessments, learning/teaching techniques and educational research Research materials - journal articles, summaries, abstracts, case studies, arguments, theses, policies, indices, etc. Data - Earth and space data (imagery, numeric values, maps) Annotations - comments, reviews, teaching tips, additional content News and opportunities - information on grants, conferences, workshops, professional development, opportunities, etc. Tools - software or applications for interacting, accessing, manipulating or viewing, calculators and converters, models

6 Build & Contribute Collection Process 1.Is the collection theme within DLESE scope* 2.Determine type and format of collection * ** 3.Understand collection policies * 4.Create a scope statement * Determine collection building strategy Determine collection selection criteria 5.Create metadata records (catalog resources) ** 6.Send metadata records to DLESE ** 7.Acceptance by accessioning taskforce ** 8.Maintain the collection ** * Part 1 (morning) ** Part 2 (afternoon)

7 Scope it Out - Mystery in a Bag - Activity Goal:  To have another team understand what is in your mystery bag without them having to open the bag Directions:  In teams of 3, examine your mystery bag  Create a collection with a theme  Decide which things do or don’t meet your theme. Those that do, put back in the bag  Create a short document describing your collection & info. needed to understand it

8 Key Points of a Good Scope Statement Collection builder describes who they are  Who is the person or organization (contact info too)  What is the purpose of the organization Collection purpose and goals  What is the purpose, goal or theme (overarching)  Who is the intended audience  How does collection fit with DLESE scope Collection policy  How are resources chosen and what is their granularity  What types of materials are included Terms of use  Who owns the resources and metadata Quality assurance and persistence  How are metadata records produced and maintained

9 Questions to Initiate Collection Building Is the collection being newly created or does it already exist? Is the collection about learning resources or reviews of learning resources? Does the collection have existing metadata? Do collection documents articulate what gets in and what doesn’t and how? Is the collection expected to grow? What granularity will the collection have?

10 Existing Collection Scenarios in DLESE Group of educators gather resources around a theme (DWEL, EET); use DCS Single educator makes their materials available (EMVC, AVC); use DCS or template Organization makes an existing repository available (NASA, NAP); use translation Project reviews or annotates resources (CRS, JESSE); use template

11 Digital Water Education Library (DWEL) K-12 and informal educational settings Water in the Earth system focus Gathering of 3 rd party resources by distributed teams of educators Reviewed collection Currently 200 resources in DLESE

12 DWEL Strategy for Defining Scope Concept webs developed for topical campaigns  Groundwater  Surface water  Oceans  Water in the atmosphere  Water use

13 DWEL Collection Building Strategy Use targeted resource gathering Each grade level group selected (by voting) the concepts most relevant to their target audience Focused search of WWW and other sources for “best” learning objects Structured, robust review process of each resource

14 DWEL Work Hub Tracks workflows Organizes concepts, resources gathered Facilitates reviews Calendar of events, deliverables

15 Collection Building Methods DCS (DLESE Catalog System)  Provides a user interface to generate metadata and manage collection Template  Use a DLESE XML template as a guide to create own metadata records using any method  Do own collection management Translation  Programmatically map existing metadata fields to DLESE metadata fields  Do own collection management

16 Collection Accessioning Requirements Be within DLESE scope Have a scope statement Complete required metadata (afternoon) Meet or exceed resource quality and metadata quality guidelines (show in guide) Get records to DLESE (afternoon)

17 DLESE Reviewed Collection (DRC) Meets collections accessioning criteria and documents a process for ensuring: 1.Scientific accuracy 2.Importance of significance 3.Pedagogical effectiveness 4.Completeness of documentation 5.Ease of use for teachers and learners 6.Inspirational or motivational for learners 7.Robustness as a digital resource

18 Develop a Reviewed Collection - Activity Goal:  Understand issues when working with the DLESE Reviewed Collection criteria Directions:  Evaluate a resource with respect to the 7 DLESE review criteria  How does one assess, measure and report a resource’s alignment with these criteria?

19 Lessons Learned in Collection Building Use good and in scope resources Presentation of the resource is just as important as the content  Educational context is understood  Access to data/other materials works Metadata quality is just as important as resource quality Start with a small group of metadata records and build strategically

20 Summary - Part 1 Scope statements are the foundation of a collection Collection building methods differ DLESE has a Reviewed Collection Become familiar with the Collection Builder’s Guide Questions?

21 Part 2: Workshop Presenters Bryan Aivazian:  Community Services and DWEL Holly Devaul:  DLESE Program Center Ed Geary:  Community Services and DWEL Katy Ginger:  DLESE Program Center Shelley Olds:  DLESE Program Center

22 Build & Contribute Collection Process 1.Is the collection theme within DLESE scope* 2.Determine type and format of collection * ** 3.Understand collection policies * 4.Create a scope statement * Determine collection building strategy Determine collection selection criteria 5.Create metadata records (catalog resources) ** 6.Send metadata records to DLESE ** 7.Acceptance by accessioning taskforce ** 8.Maintain the collection ** * Part 1 (morning) ** Part 2 (afternoon)

23 Review of Part 1: Starting a Collection Kind of collection:  Web resources or annotations  Materials (lesson plans, images etc.) Scope statement:  Collection purpose  Selection criteria, contact info Collection building strategy:  Who decides what gets in and how  Who catalogs; who does quality assurance

24 Part 2: Technical Aspects of Collection Building Collection types:  Resource, annotation, news and opps Metadata formats:  ADN, collection, annotation, news-opps Creating metadata records:  Required fields & controlled vocabularies  Cataloging best practices Sending metadata records to DLESE:  OAI, , FTP

25 DLESE Collection Types Type of resource materials Collection type Metadata format Web-based educational resources Datasets Pedagogical materials Research materials (articles) Images, graphics, photos ResourceADN Comments, reviews, annotations Educational standards Teaching tips Additional content Annotation Time-sensitive announcements Fellowships, grants, jobs Workshops, conferences News/Opps

26 Create Metadata– meta”Dating” Activity Goal:  Understand metadata quality, consistency and generation Directions:  In teams of 3, brainstorm what information you want to know about each other and create a ‘metadata record’ for yourself that includes 5 categories  Facilitator ‘searches’ our database

27 Meta”Dating” Outcomes Describing resources in a structured and consistent way helps users find resources efficiently and understand their scope. Important components include:  Required metadata (information that all records contain)  Controlled vocabularies (terms used are the same and well defined)  Consistent cataloging

28 DLESE Required Metadata ADN News and Opportunities Annotation Each framework has required metadata Will only be covering ADN See us later for the other formats

29 Title - the name of the resource URL - the URL to an online resource Description - a narrative describing the content/purpose Subject - general topic areas that the resource is about Technical reqs - browser or platform requirements Resource type - type of educational resource (lab, photo) Audience - grade range of the resource Copyright - copyright statement Cost - yes/no/unknown cost to use or access resource Resource creator - author or publisher information Resource cataloger - cataloger information DLESE Required Metadata - ADN Format (Cataloger Provided)

30 DLESE Required Metadata - ADN Format Language - of the resource and metadata Copyright of the metadata - ownership of the metadata Terms of use - how the metadata may be used Metadata framework - catalog scheme (e.g. ADN) Creation date - creation date of metadata record Accession date - the accession date of the item in to the collection builder's collection Catalog name and number - name of collection and an id number for the metadata record like a library call # Record status - status of the metadata record within a collection (e.g.accessioned, working) (Administrative)

31 Methods for Creating Metadata - the how All metadata records are XML files DCS (DLESE Catalog System):  Exploration activity Template:  See sample record and complete required metadata fields Translation:  Talk to Katy

32 Cataloging Activity (demo of new tool) Goal:  Play with new metadata editing tool Directions:  Go to  Explore controlled vocabularies  Explore required metadata  Explore validating metadata

33 DLESE Controlled Vocabularies To provide consistent search results Aid users in browsing the library Aids DLESE in assessing library content Each metadata framework has their own Used in the required ADN fields of:  Subject, resource type, grade range, cost  Technical reqs, language, record status

34 What is this resource? How important is metadata? At dlese.org type in: id:NASA-ESERevProd080 (global biosphere) id:DLESE (hurricane opal) id:DWEL (drains rains) id:NASA-ESERevProd011 (atmospheric detectives) Is the resource what you expect? Why/why not? What advice do you recommend when writing a description?

35 Cataloging Best Practices Tips about what to do and not do when creating metadata for DLESE Each field has examples Fields may provide additional tips in special situations Controlled vocabularies are defined too See example for title (in guide)

36 How to get records to DLESE OAI-PMH: A protocol for metadata harvesting by the Open Archives Initiative (DLESE has software to support it - See it at the sharefair) Send a zip or tar file of metadata records to Ftp: Can send anonymously to DLESE; talk to Katy

37 Acceptance by Accessioning Taskforce Required of all collections Taskforce meets periodically DPC provides lots of support Is composed of:  Collections Committee Chair  Members of the Collections Committee

38 Maintaining collections DLESE checks active collections:  URL link checking  Improper XML coding  Duplicates within a collection  Required metadata  Presence of new records in tar/zip files  Resources are still within DLESE scope DLESE notifies collection builder and the collection builder is responsible for the actual updates and changes

39 Tips for Collection Builders Perform internal and ongoing quality assurance and technical checks Update and respond to maintenance requests Involve the DPC early because technically there is a lot for a collection builder to do

40 Questionnaire for DLESE Do you plan to create a DLESE collection? Do you have enough information to start collection work? What collection support or training do you anticipate needing?

41 Definitions (1) Metadata - structured descriptive information about resources (e.g. info in a card catalog) Metadata Standard - a representation that is developed & available from a standards body or metadata organization (e.g Dublin Core) Metadata Framework - a representation that may or may not be based on or derived from a standard by a standards body (e.g. collection, annotation)

42 Definitions (2) Resource - actual content - web based learning material, annotations, reviews, data, imagery, audio clips, code etc. Record - an XML file containing metadata describing a resource Collection - a group of metadata records organized around a theme Annotation - more content / metadata appropriate to associate with a resource

43 Definitions (3) Schema - XML schema files (code) of the metadata representation Metadata Format - the metadata representation the XML metadata files are using (e.g. ADN, IMS, Dublin Core) Harvest - methods to get metadata files