You are an educational researcher within a specific STEM discipline who has developed 1,000 resources that are learning objects, which include lesson plans and curricula. To find out how your resources will be used in homes and classrooms you need to organize and make them available on the Web. The NSDL EduPak digital library services platform for education can help. By downloading the freely available EduPak platform which consists of three Web services: the Digital Repository (DR), the NCore Collection System (NCS) and Search, you have the ability to create a production-level technical digital library environment on your computer system for cataloging and sharing your resources.

Students using lesson plan components.

STEP ONE: Download EduPak 1.0 here and follow installation instructions: http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/Community:EduPak

STEP TWO: Begin cataloging resources using the NCS. You may find it helpful to follow the National Science Digital Library’s (NSDL) metadata guidelines available at http://nsdl.org/collection/metadata-guide.php.  This page provides helpful suggestions for those who are hosting their own web services as well those who are preparing collections for inclusion in the NSDL collection.

STEP THREE: Create a Web site that can search your resources. NCore Search allows you to customize the interface that will access this collection for the audience who will be using it.
Options for users such as textual and field-based searches (audience, subject, resource type or content standard), as well as geospatial search  can be integrated with Web 2.0 applications such as Google Maps.

STEP FOUR (optional): If your collection was originally hosted elsewhere and now you’d like to share it with NSDL, take a look at the Contribute Resource page (http://nsdl.org/collection/) which includes information on how to share metadata with NSDL (http://nsdl.org/collection/metadata-guide.php#share), this may include reworking the metadata of the collection, so that it can be harvested by NSDL.  When you use the NSDL DC metadata format, users who are searching NSDL will be able to find your information and records regardless of whether your collection is hosted through NSDL or not.

If you or your staff need additional training or if you would like to talk with someone please contact Karon Kelly at 303-497-2652.