DLESE and NSDL The role of the Digital Library for Earth System Education* (DLESE) in the National SMETE Digital Library Presented by Dave Fulker Director of the Unidata Program Center University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Boulder, Colorado *DLESE is funded jointly by the GEO & EHR Directorates of the NSF

9 April '01www.DLESE.org2 Two Emphases for this Talk 1.Sketching one of DLESE’s contributions to the nascent NSDL initiative so far: Building community foundations (Skipping other efforts by DLESE & partners) Cataloging methodologies & tools Sharable middleware to support interoperability... 2.Sketching a role DLESE is positioned to play: enabling data access & discovery in NSDL Relevant data should be easy to find Data found should be easy to use & understand

9 April '01www.DLESE.org3 Community Foundations for NSDL All hands meeting Attendees from all 42 of the funded projects Posters, brainstorming... Election of an NSDL Coordinating Committee Formation of workgroups, active in planning NSDL Individual workgroup reports Guidance on Core Integration functionality for NSDL Overarching white paper, see: 7 Workgroups Governance Community, Education, & Pedagogy Collections Standards Services Evaluation Technical Infrastructure

NSDL Information Architecture Developed by the Technical Infrastructure Workgroup referenced items & collections referenced items & collections Referenced Items & Collections NSDL Services NSDL Services Other NSDL Services CI Services visualization... CI Services discussion CI Services personalization CI Services topic-map registry CI Services query transform Core Services: annotation Core Collection- Building Services protocol mediation Core Collection- Building Services persistence Core Services: harvesting Portals & Clients Portals & Clients Portals & Clients Usage Enhancement Collection Building User Interfaces NSDL Collections NSDL Collections NSDL Collections Core NSDL “Bus”

9 April '01www.DLESE.org5 Enabling Data Access & Discovery in NSDL (reflecting the convergence of needs from two worlds) In the digital libraries world, science educators expect to find & to use (unfamiliar) data/images meaningfully Tools are envisioned that will help Integrate/visualize complex data/images from diverse sources Handle geo-referencing, resampling, units of measure... But data/tool classification is an unsolved problem In the scientific data management world One can publish data/images almost as easily as text, & one can access remote data as easily as local data But it is hard to find data & match them to the tool at hand... ⇒ Common need: discovery systems & rich metadata Embracing discipline-specific data semantics Supporting the use of powerful software tools (GIS...)

9 April '01www.DLESE.org6 A Dilemma: Who Performs the Work? Data providers can’t meet all needs Providers perceive little benefit from the work of adding metadata Meaning is always problem-specific, so complete semantic metadata is impossible Granularity requirements also are problem-specific Data users typically lack expertise/time to Form suitable units of information Aggregations of multiple files (time series, e.g.) Subsets (sub-samplings of specified variables, e.g.) Acquire metadata needed for tools & understanding

9 April '01www.DLESE.org7 Idea: 3rd Party Metadata Publication Publishable Inventories & Catalogs (PICats) could be built anywhere using XML To create “virtual aggregations” of data sets To characterize data sets in meaningful ways (including metadata needed by applications) Data providers would see reduced demands for filling user-specific requests Data users would gain new views of data Relating them to specific (educational) contexts Facilitating their use in familiar software tools

PICat Consistency with NSDL Architecture referenced items & collections referenced items & collections 3rd Party PICats NSDL Services NSDL Services Other Data Services: modeling, etc. Core Services: visualization A Core Service: PICat harvesting Web Browser Data Analysis Application Usage Enhancement Collection Building User Interfaces NSDL Collections NSDL Collections DODS- Accessible Data Sets Core NSDL “Bus” See Java Demo

9 April '01www.DLESE.org9 Example of a (Prototype) PICat Note: XML => ease of inclusion in digital libraries... <server type="DODS" ID="NCAR" url=" <dataset name="Atmospheric State over US, 21h UT, 30-Mar-2001" server="LocalDataSets" urlPath=" _ruc.nc"/> <dataset name="Aviation Model (remote) 12h UT, 05-Apr-2001" server="NCAR" urlPath="dods/model/ _avn-q.nc"/>