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 The goal of the Earth System Education Digital Library (DL) is to promote communication, learning, and knowledge development about the earth system. To this end, the digital library should provide easy access to the full range of material of use in earth system education including information, data, classroom and laboratory activities, and assessment tools. The digital library will also ensure the development and assessment of educational resources and promote community dialogue. The collection should include material from the various earth science disciplines, the intersections between the various spheres of the earth system, and the relationship between humans and the earth.

The DL should be provocative and engaging, a place where those interested in asking questions about the earth system will go. One could think of it as a mall that would appeal to a variety of shoppers; it would have exciting displays of material to promote inquiry, a wide selection of products and product venders, and kiosks for discussions about hot topics.

The DL should provide resources about all aspects of earth system science education. It should include education resources about each of the earth science disciplines, but should emphasize the earth system and the interactions between the various spheres (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and exosphere), relations between the biosphere and other parts of the earth system, and the relationship between humans and the earth. Given the increasing emphasis on earth system science, it is particularly important to provide resources for instructors who may have little experience with a systems approach and/or little knowledge and preparation in areas outside their disciplinary expertise. The DL provides an excellent opportunity for storage and use of geospatial data. It should provide seamless links to other digital libraries and other sources of earth science data. What sets this DL apart from other earth science digital libraries is its focus on education.

The digital library should be dynamic and will evolve over time based on use and user input. It will provide materials and services for both users and producers as well as a mechanism for ongoing communication about materials in the DL and about other aspects of earth system science education. It will include a multitude of resources including data in a variety of forms and instructional materials that promote inquiry-based learning about the earth system. The DL will provide seamless links to other relevant digital libraries. It would include data sets, information, models, visualization models, simulations, metadata, multimedia materials, virtual field trips and so forth. Instructional materials, which may use resources of the types described above or may be stand-alone materials, would include classroom and laboratory activities, problem sets, curricular-support materials, guided inquiry activities, tutorials to support student-driven inquiry, course outlines, courses, and assessment tools. Parts of the DL will have passed through a rigorous peer review process based in part on content accuracy and pedagogical effectiveness. (refer to work of Panel X) The DL should include feedback/assessment mechanisms – user feedback on materials. There should be a built-in evaluation of DL – the experience the user/producer has with the library should be of interest to the library

The library should support a range of users including those with different aptitudes, prior knowledge in the earth science domain, technological literacy, interests and needs. The DL should provide easy and individualized access to all through a search mechanism and profile of user (geographic setting, educational level, novice or expert user, content topic, or other ways to sort). This should be done through a computer search, with an option for a human help desk.

The library will evolve based on use and user input. In the initial phase, the materials in the DL should be about equally balanced between stand alone data/data sets and instructional materials category, with perhaps a greater amount of instructional materials. The balance in the long run will be based on use and users. Efforts should be made develop educational materials to keep pace with new data.

In the long run, users of the mature DL will include K-16 educators and their students, in both formal and informal educational settings, as well as anyone with questions about the earth system, such as journalists, policy makers, researchers, and the general public. However, to make the project manageable in scope, initial development of the DL will focus on an audience of undergraduate learners and educators. We believe this focus is appropriate because many of the providers work at this level, the demand for resources at this level is anticipated to be high, and the materials and resources for undergraduate users can be adapted for use by other groups. The initial target of the undergraduate users will result in earth system science content that would be at an appropriate level for many other users including pre-college earth science students and teachers

The DL should also provide services. It should support inquiry-based learning, communications channels, and user profiling. Services (for different groups) might include workshops for educators on using the DL in the classroom and others for potential DL providers (as it will be important to transform data-rich material from researchers to high quality instructional material), on-line discussion groups for users, boxes of pedagogical support information, and support for producers. Tools for users should provide clear and detailed guidelines about the conditions and resources needed for its successful implementation; tools technology requirements are easily available to potential users. Refer to panel 4 and 5 for panel for more elaboration on the services.

User scenarios (examples of questions users might use the DL to answer)

Target scenarios include interdisciplinary, geospatial, processes, cycles.

What is the impact of population changes in Maryland over time?

What are some classroom activities I could consider using that would engage my students in assessing effect of volcanic eruptions on climate?

What causes monsoons? Summer vs. winter?

What data supports the need for scrubbers in power plants

Etc.

Action Plan (recognizing some of this will be done by the UCAR/PAGE GDL project)

Identify key user community needs – this will be undergraduate students and educators in the initial phase – through focus group discussions, listserve input, and web and/or hard copy questionnaires to members of earth science professional societies. Elicit from primary user groups a list of questions they would want students to address in one or more areas and needs of instructor community. Identify the educational materials currently available and define gaps to focus creation and development of new materials. Assess state-of-the-art of digital library supporting technologies and resources in the fields of Library Science, Information Technology, and the earth sciences.

1. Establish standards and protocols through Digital Library Reference Model (e.g. HTTP, Digital Earth Reference Model).
2. Implement the DL by acquiring collections, filtering and classifying, metadata development, documentation, quality rating, formatting, dissemination, gathering feedback.
3. Establish a working group to oversee development of the collection. This group should include people from representative constituencies who can provide leadership and experience in this area and should work closely with staff developing the UCAR/PAGE GDL. Regarding an editorial board, we refer to report from Panel X. Initial development will include material primarily targeted at undergraduate students and educators
4. Based on the results of the needs assessment, develop technology-rich materials for classroom applications. Set standards for materials, services. Initial development will include materials targeted primarily at undergraduate students and educators. Later, this development would include K-12 (or subset) students and educators.
5. Testing and feedback - test the library and its collections and add and expand the collection based on lessons learned.
6. Expansion of collection through development of materials for other users based on lessons learned and future needs assessment.

Develop and offer workshops for educators on the use of the DL and use in their teaching, develop a suite of learning tools to support educator as a learner in using DL, with the possibility for educator to use same tools with students.

4. Communications and community building to promote the DL

1. UCAR/PAGE sends all members of this meeting a web documents that gives the who, what, when, where, why of their project. (immediate)
2. Community assessment and DL interest building. Conduct focus groups at 3-4 meetings (possibly GSA, AGU, AMS, NSTA/NESTA) in next academic year to give/receive info/feedback from community. Web surveys (in item 1 above) will inform community of DL effort and solicit their feedback. Focus group and survey results would be written as a report to the DL community.
3. Representatives of the DL program meet annually with other earth science digital library programs/projects to examine issues/progress, including other digital library plans and promote communication within this community. Also send "DL Ambassadors" to meetings of crosscutting DLs (e.g., medical, engineering).
4. Formulate/ renew/review action plan for future plans in 2 years.

4. Establish incentives to participate in the DL (possible selection of materials for including in peer-reviewed part of the DL, other?)