Abstract: In a world of technical and social innovation–from the proverbial high school student who cobbles together a killer app in a basement, to institutional leaders who go out on a limb promising end-to-end solutions on tight deadlines–the National Science Digital Library’s (NSDL) development strategies fit somewhere in the middle. NSDL made the decision to build a Fedora-based technical platform to enable user participation and collaboration across over 200 partner digital libraries and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics discipline communities in support of NSDL’s educational mission. Dr. Howe will discuss the Fedora vision, why it inspired her management team to “take the leap,” and how she balanced inherent risk and investment against long-term benefits. She will give an overview of a unique Fedora-enabled educational application and discuss why it solves a fundamental problem for K12 teachers. And finally, she will reflect on why she believes that, in the end, you will achieve none of your goals by avoiding risks.

In a keynote address to the Fedora Users Group at the Second International Open Repositories Conference in San Antonio entitled, “”Risk, What Risk: Choosing Fedora for the National Science Digital Library” Kaye Howe, Executive Director for NSDL’s Core Integration project began her remarks with humor and candor. She asked if everyone could see what she referred to as “the last legal pad” where, she assured attendees, she would be sketching visual aides. She set a near perfect counterpoint tone to Sandy Payette’s sweeping organizational and technical presentation with a cautionary quote from T.S. Eliot: “We had the experience, but missed the meaning.”

She drew an analogy between Carl Sagan’s well known “billions and billions of stars” remark and NSDL 1.0 which was designed, she suggested, to collect billions and billions of STEM resources that would be accessed by a vast all-ages audience. It quickly became apparent that there was lots of accessible, good stuff, she explained, and that we would build the library by collecting metadata of all varieties. She noted that this strategy did not prove to be scalable, and that two groups who had different views on how to proceed–the “Metadata rules” pod and the “Metadata is dead” pod–emerged within NSDL.

Referring to a fictitious “Girls Guide to Management,” Kaye shared the secret of herding academic (cats) with the audience which boils down to: “Clarity is not always desirable.” She credited Carl Lagoze with throwing gasoline on the fire with “death of metadata” proclamations whenever negotiations reached a delicate balance. Lagoze’s views are well documented.

Going on to explain that ultimately “The clarity of metadata did not reflect the richness of intellectual query,” Kaye emphasized that context and relativism were more important in pursuit of scholarship and do not diminish the fundamental nature of the intellectual enterprise. She sees Fedora as being analogous to the complexity of our collective intellectual enterprise, and at the center of intellectual empowerment in an evolving NSDL 2.0.

She touched on NSDL’s K12 focus and the Strand Map Service application noting that the sciences are only accessible to students if they become interested early in their educations. “A college sophomore is unlikely to wake up one day and decide to pursue a career in physics.” Noting once again that “Our civil religion is education” she said, “If we had not adopted Fedora NSDL would have been a failed experiment and the implications that this would have for education has made it relevant. Fedora has given our enterprise a new sense of vitality.”

She ended by quoting Gabriel Marcel who said, “We think it’s a problem and it turns out to be a mystery,” and went on to reference Oedipus Rex. Oedipus, son of Laius, king of Thebes, who is also apparently a contributor to the “Girls Guide to Management,” expressed frustration when he could not get clear decision-making information from the Seer. She encouraged the audience to take chances and follow their instincts in spite not knowing how things might turn out. “Most of us have to make decisions complicated by the politics of the moment in the face of incomplete knowledge.”

Ed note: The word from the hallways seemed to be that different aspects of Kaye’s remarks resonated with just about everyone in very personal ways. One man said, “I don’t know when I have enjoyed a talk so much start to finish.”