The NSDL Annual Meeting Planning Committee is soliciting proposals for presentations at the 2010 NSDL Annual Meeting, which will be held November 1-3 in Washington, D.C. at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. Proposals are welcomed from both the NSDL community and from individuals and groups not directly affiliated with an NSDL-funded project. The Committee encourages all projects to share their experiences and successes, and to raise issues in six specific areas of interest across NSDL.

NSDL: Celebrating a Digital Decade and Envisioning the NextThe NSDL program held its first formal funding cycle during fiscal year 2000 and as we look back from our perch in 2010, this meeting allows us to celebrate our 10 years of accomplishments while sharing our unique perspectives that provide the foundation for the next decade of NSDL work. For 2010, proposals should explore issues and report on activities that share current perspectives and lessons learned in building the library and its community of users, and also probe those issues that still remain a challenge as we look forward to the next decade.

The Committee asks that you to submit your talk in one of six topical areas. The six categories for presentations include:
Evaluation and Impact: Focus on efforts and results to measure the effects of NSDL in real educational settings, and to document impacts as observed from the STEM teacher and learner audiences of NSDL projects;
Outreach and Professional Development: Outline models, research or designs of activities implemented that promote the use of NSDL in alignment with instructional practice;
Research Findings: Present cumulative experiences and compelling narratives about ongoing, or concluded, research (e.g., technology, education, policy) within the context of the NSDL goals to support effective usage of library materials;
Sustainability: Describe strategies for sustaining your work within a broader vision for NSDL while keeping pace the evolving national STEM research and education infrastructure;
Services, Discoverability and Technology: Demonstrate tools and technology developed to enable the creation, discovery and adoption of digital materials tailored for use with today’s learners;
Collection Development and Maintenance: Advance the craft of digital library building by presenting strategies and software for library building, working with standards, archiving and other library tools needed to ensure the utility and integrity of library collections.

The Committee continues to encourage presentations that incorporate various media (e.g., video clips, podcasts, blogs), which further underscore the digital nature of our work.

How to Submit a Proposal
You may fill out a form for submitting your proposal at http://www.nsdlnetwork.org/annual_meeting/proposal_submission.
Please note that you will need to login to the site to submit this form. We will notify presenters by September 3.

Proposals will be due by midnight (Mountain Time) on August 13. NOTE: There will not be an extension of this deadline. Because the number of proposals might exceed space, the Committee may not be able to accommodate all presentations as in past years and you may be asked to change the length or format of your proposed activity. Please check the proposal FAQ
for general information.

We will accept poster submissions starting in early September.

Just a quick request to save the dates for the next Annual Meeting. It will be November 1-3 in Washington DC at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. We will be celebrating 10 years of NSDL!

The format is the same as in years past, where the poster session will be the first night (July 1st) and the meeting sessions start on Tuesday and run through mid-day on the 3rd. We will be putting out additional details soon so you can make your travel and lodging arrangements. We will release a call for proposals around the first of July.

I want to point out that November 2 is Election Day, so please make plans to vote early or by absentee ballot. We work hard to avoid conflicts like this, but these dates were the best option for a number of reasons, including finding a hotel that could accommodate us.

We do hope to see you there!

Susan Jesuroga
Annual Meeting Chair

It’s starting to look like spring - at least the bulbs are starting to poke their heads out of the ground in my parts. And with onset of spring comes a little spring cleaning of sorts, and that is the completion of the Annual Meeting survey report by the Planning Committee.

Overall we had 92 respondents, with 80 completing all the questions. THANK YOU to those who took the survey! We do consider and respond to your input in planning the next meeting. Just a few highlights.

The overall meeting rating was 4.32 out of 5.00, which was up from 2008. We worked hard, in the very short timeframe we had (due to funding, we started planning months later than usual ), and it’s obvious that we hit the mark in providing a good meeting experience. The poster session continues to be a crowd pleaser. This year, the closing session on sustainability by Kate Wittenberg of Ithaka came in second in its usefulness to attendees.

We’ve also made a few recommendations for the next meeting, including a better process for monitoring speaker time and working with NSF to ensure more staff participation and opportunities to interact. As in past years, there are always attendee comments about including users, and the committee continues to discuss the options. It is a difficult issue to resolve given the limited budget for supporting meeting travel for outsiders and the reality that this continues to be a PI meeting, with emphasis on sharing results and insights.

So, please do take a look, and as always, feel free to send me ideas and thoughts for the future.

We hope you all enjoyed the 2009 Annual Meeting! The energy and ideas from the wide variety of topics often spilled out of the sessions to animated conversations in the hallway. Beyond the findings and lessons learned presented in the sessions, one could see the wheels churning and the connections being made for future collaborations. Always a gratifying sight for those of us who work to put on this meeting.

We are slowly getting the presentations and linking them on the community site through the schedule page. If you were a speaker and haven’t yet sent your presentations, please get them in to Robert Payo.

I also want to remind you to take a moment to complete the Annual Meeting Survey. We do use your feedback in planning the next meeting, so every comments counts!

And finally, thanks to all of you in the community who came, shared, discussed and connected. The meeting represented the best at what a thriving community is all about.

We’re just a week away from the NSDL Annual Meeting, and the buzz is reaching a crescendo (or maybe it’s just the loud voice in my head reminding me of all the things left to get done!).

We’re looking at a great set of presentations, and do make sure to save some calories for the poster reception. Good food and topics like educational data mining, mobile learning, metrics and a question we all wrestle with, is there an educational advantage to NSDL?

Here are the things you don’t want to miss:

Tuesday, the opening plenary from 5-6:00 PM followed by the poster reception.

Wednesday at 8:30 AM, the panel on cyberlearning, where we intend to reinforce the theme for our meeting.

Thursday closing plenary at 12:15 PM on issues of sustainability.

And of course, don’t miss the opportunity to connect with your colleagues, both old and new, during the breaks.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Will your digital resources and services survive and thrive? This was the central question driving the Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability. We are pleased that Kate Wittenberg, formerly with the NSDL Core Integration group and now the Project Director of Client and Partnership Development for Ithaka, will walk us through sustainability options and obstacles facing projects such as NSDL at the closing plenary on November 19.

And remember that registration and poster submission closes on October 19, so hurry on in to get your seat reserved!

The new NSDL Community Site is up and running, complete with Annual Meeting Registration and information about the meeting. You will have to create a login for the site to register for the meeting, and the steps for registering can be found in the Whiteboard Report.

You can also go directly to the Annual Meeting pages for more info about the meeting without logging in or registering.

We’re finishing up the program schedule and will have that posted within a week, after all the presenters have been notified. It’s shaping up to be a great set of sessions that really underscore NSDL’s movement from library to learning.

We’re also developing an Orientation Brown Bag to be held in early November for all new projects and staff. So, stay tuned for more details on that.

Great response from the community! Thanks to all of you who scurried to meet our tight deadlines and submitted your talks. We have 46 submissions and the top categories are Services and Technology and Collection Development. The Committee will be reviewing these and we’ll be back out to you as soon as humanly possible.

Topics range from concrete examples of how to mine different sources of web usage data to middleware to help improve the accessibility of NSDL to the blind.

The registration site and poster submission pages with be released mid-September, and we’ll be back out to you all when they are ready.

Selected full text articles from the Journal of Materials Education (JME) are being promoted and made freely available on the NSF supported National Science Digital Library (NSDL), Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) to encourage broad dissemination and readership. These papers are part of a special JME issue which includes manuscripts from the Fall 2007 MRS Forum on Materials Science Education.

The Annual Meeting Planning Committee is soliciting proposals for presentations at the 2009 NSDL Annual Meeting, November 17-19 in Washington, D.C. Proposals are welcomed from both the NSDL community and from individuals and groups not directly affiliated with an NSDL-funded project. The Committee encourages all projects to share their experiences and successes, and to raise issues in six specific areas of interest across NSDL.

From Digital Libraries to Cyberlearning
In 2008, the NSDL Annual Meeting highlighted activities that are pushing the boundaries of digital libraries by finding ways to weave together learning and technology in our highly connected world. Presentations also underscored the challenges of working within the evolving national infrastructure while producing real results in the classroom. For 2009, proposals should explore issues and report on activities building on this transition from library to learning.

This year the Committee is asking you to submit your talk in one of six topical areas. The six categories for presentations include:

Evaluation and Impact: Focus on efforts and results to measure the effects of NSDL in real educational settings, and to document impacts as observed from the STEM teacher and learner audiences of NSDL projects;

Outreach and Professional Development: Outline models, research or designs of activities implemented that promote the use of NSDL in alignment with instructional practice;

Research Findings: Present cumulative experiences and compelling narratives about ongoing, or concluded, research (e.g., technology, education, policy) within the context of the NSDL goals to support effective usage of library materials;

Sustainability: Describe strategies for sustaining your work within a broader vision for NSDL while keeping pace the evolving national STEM research and education infrastructure;

Services, Discoverability and Technology: Demonstrate tools and technology developed to enable the creation, discovery and adoption of digital materials tailored for use with today’s learners;

Collection Development: Advance the craft of digital library building by presenting strategies and software for library building, working with standards, archiving and other library tools needed to ensure the utility and integrity of library collections.

The Committee continues to encourage presentations that incorporate various media (e.g., video clips, podcasts, blogs), which further underscore the movement from Libraries to Learning.

The following session types will be available for the 2009 meeting: Panels, Presentations, Computer Labs, and Lightning Talks. Please read the suggestions about session formats below; refer to the Proposal Submission Process FAQ; and as always, contact the Planning Committee with questions.

Panel or Presentation, up to 30 minutes: This time would support an update on several facets of one project’s activities, or several projects could report on related activities.

Panel or Presentation, up to 60 minutes: This time would support a panel presentation comprising several perspectives on an issue or an in-depth examination of one significant issue.

Computer Lab: These sessions do not have to follow a specific format, though we ask that proposals describe an engaging and interactive session, resulting in tangible outcomes for participants. Possible session formats could include workshops or training on tools and technology, or hands-on demonstrations of site features or activities. Some examples include: train-the-trainer sessions on delivering a specific workshop curriculum, learning to use an NSDL service such as Content Clips or CWIS, or learning how to de-bug a particular piece of software. We do not plan to provide computers this year unless specifically requested by the presenter, since most attendees bring their personal laptops to the meeting.

Lightning Talk: Lightning talks are 5-minute presentations on any topic and are a great way to quickly share detailed information. The style is informal, focused, informative, and can be as prepared or as spontaneous as the presenter chooses. You do not need to organize a whole session of lighting talks. The Planning Committee will organize the talks into 60-minute sessions.

How to Submit a Proposal
Proposals will be due by midnight of August 28. NOTE: There will not be an extension of this deadline. Because the meeting space is limited this year, the Committee may not be able to accommodate all presentations as in past years and you may be asked to change the length or format of your proposed activity. Please check the proposal FAQ for general information.

Although the complete Annual Meeting site is not yet available, you may fill out a template for submitting your proposal at http://annualmeeting.nsdl.org/proposal_registration.php.

We will notify presenters by September 4.

We will accept poster submissions starting in early September. If you have any questions, please contact me.