Jennifer Macaulay ILS655-Digital Libraries Dr. Liu Digital Library Review Assignment #3 July 9, 2007.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Digital Library: A Review Background: Award Abstract #0226354 Harvard-Smithsonian Digital Video Library DUE NSF Org:

Initial Amendment Date:

September 18, 2002

Latest Amendment Date:

September 18, 2002

Award Number:

0226354

Award Instrument:

Standard Grant

Program Manager:

Robert Stephen Cunningham DUE Division of Undergraduate Education EHR Directorate for Education & Human Resources

Start Date:

September 1, 2002

Expires:

November 30, 2004 (Estimated)

Awarded Amount to Date:

$929992

Investigator(s):

Matthew Schneps [email protected](Principal Investigator)

Sponsor:

Smithsonian Institution Astrophysical Observatory 60 Garden St Cambridge, MA 02138 617/495-7317

NSF Program(s):

NATIONAL SMETE DIGITAL LIBRARY, OFFICE OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY AC

Field Application(s):

0000099 Other Applications NEC

Program Reference Code(s): SMET,9178 Program Element Code(s): ABSTRACT

7444,1253

This Collections project is assembling and managing an extensive collection of STEM digital video materials produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The Center's collection of digital video materials supporting STEM education reform has been developed over the past decade and a half at a cost of some $15 million, and includes source materials for well-known television programs such as A PRIVATE UNIVESE along with professional development materials created for Annenberg/CPB. The collection consists of some 3,500 hours of video footage, archived in digital form and indexed through a searchable database. Materials in this collection span a variety of topics and formats and include high-quality, case-study footage showing teaching in action, rare and difficult to create materials documenting children's ideas in science and math, interviews with internationally prominent researchers in STEM learning, and computer animations and other costly visualizations of STEM ideas. This project is establishing a library of 350 hours of digital video materials supporting STEM education that will be available through the NSDL.

Project personnel are reviewing the entire collection for materials of value in supporting standards-based learning. Appropriate materials are being tagged according to their

applicability to these standards, the collection is being culled to a manageable and useful size, and catalogued so teachers and teacher educators are able to search the collection by STEM discipline, age level, or content area. The project is making these materials broadly accessible on a web platform while archiving a full-resolution master copy as part of the Harvard Library. The web interface is linking the collection to NRC National Science Education Standards, AAAS Benchmarks, and state and local standards. The project is working with advisors from the NSDL Core Integration program to ensure metadata and formats conform to related efforts of the NSDL. It is also paving the way for the use of video in education while providing educators broad access to vital materials supporting STEM education reform. Significant co-funding of this project is being provided by the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences in recognition of the importance that this collection of digital video resources on the nature of science learning has for K-12 teachers and undergraduate faculty. (From http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0226354, accessed July 8, 2007).

Report & Analysis: The Harvard-Smithsonian Digital Video Library is a project sponsored by the Science Media Group, a part of the Science Education Department at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The library is comprised of digital videos that support science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) curriculum for those who teach in grades K-12. This digital library

includes videos of clinical interviews of student ideas, demonstrations of phenomena, case studies of instruction or research, interviews with experts and correlations to state and national curriculum standards. Footage from such television programs as A Private Universe which is produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is also included. In total, the library contains over 350 hours of video footage in several subject areas that are available via the web at http://www.hsdvl.org/.

On September 1, 2002, the National Science Foundation, through the National SMETE Digital Library, awarded a grant to the Smithsonian Institution Astrophysical Observatory for $929,992 to help build the digital library. From the NSF’s abstract: This Collections project is assembling and managing an extensive collection of STEM digital video materials produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The Center's collection of digital video materials supporting STEM education reform has been developed over the past decade and a half at a cost of some $15 million, and includes source materials for well-known television programs such as A PRIVATE UNIVESE along with professional development materials created for Annenberg/CPB. The collection consists of some 3,500 hours of video footage, archived in digital form and indexed through a searchable database. Materials in this collection span a variety of topics and formats and include high-quality, case-study footage showing teaching in action, rare and difficult to create materials documenting children's ideas in science and math, interviews with internationally prominent researchers in STEM learning, and computer animations and other costly visualizations of STEM ideas. This project is establishing a library of 350 hours of digital video materials supporting STEM education that will be available through the NSDL (Award #0226354). The NSF grant expired on November 30, 2004. The project was managed by Robert Stephen Cunningham and Matthew Schnepps from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics was the principal investigator. The Office of Multidisciplinary Activities in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences also provided significant funding to project “in recognition of the importance that this collection of digital video resources on the nature of science learning has for K-12 teachers and undergraduate faculty”(Award #0226354). One of the major goals of this project was to review the entire collection of digital video in order to ascertain their value to standards-based learning. The HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics had a collection of digital video that had not previously been assessed or made publicly available. After review, the items were to be categorized and classified according to STEM subject area, age level and content area.

Items were then to be made freely accessible via the web. Part of the project also entailed adding links to standardization agencies such as the NRC National Science Education Standards, AAAS benchmarks and state and local education standards. Once completed, the collection was to become part of the National Science Digital Library initiative and available from the National Science Digital Library web site which is available at http://nsdl.org/. For this, metadata and format conformity were a key part of the work done under the grant. This project is significant because “it is also paving the way for the use of video in education while providing educators broad access to vital materials supporting STEM education reform” (Award #0226354). This project aims to be a resource for K-12 educators teaching in the STEM subjects in order to promote science education. In this collection, there are currently 1017 videos. The library has four broad categories of materials: clinical interviews, demonstrations of phenomena, case studies of instruction or research, and interviews with experts. The clinical interviews consist of interviews with both children and adults meant to illustrate how people process ideas in science in the educational setting. Examples of such interviews include discussions with middle school children about the concept of vision and discussions about college students’ notions about electricity. The demonstrations of phenomena include time lapse video of such physical phenomena as the movement of stars and the decomposition of fruit. This material is considered to be extremely useful to educators preparing lesson plans. The case studies of instruction or research reveal extensive footage of real classroom teaching. In one case, several teachers were followed and videotaped throughout their careers. Similarly, several research projects were documented on video.

The interviews with experts include discussions with experts in the STEM subject areas and include interviews with teachers, researchers and scientists who work in the education arena. (http://www.hsdvl.org/features.html). Additionally, there are links to educational standards for science curricula. Educators can search for AAAS benchmarks from their Project 2061. Project 2061 benchmarks “. . . are statements of what all students should know or be able to do in science, mathematics and technology by the end of grades 2, 5, 8, 12” (http://www.hsdvl.org/). Educators can also search for videos related to other standards such as National Science Education Standards, Principles and Standards for School Mathematics and by science and math standards in several states. It is also possible to search for videos based upon instructional criteria. The categories available for search are providing a sense of purpose for students, building on students’ ideas, engaging students with real world examples, developing and using mathematical or scientific ideas, promoting student thinking and assessing student progress (http://www.hsdvl.org/instruction.php). People can also search using combinations of most of the strategies already detailed in addition to video title, video description, text in the selected benchmarks and/or grade range. For those who may not completely understand all of their search options, a View All button is given. This option lists all of the 1017 video clips for browsing. A Quick Search box is also present on each page of the digital library web site.

Search “Using Any Criterion:”

View all:

One of the more unique features of the HS-DVL is the ability to use something known as the Strand Map. Strand Maps are “node-link diagrams illustrating how student understanding changes over time” (Sumner, n.d.). The maps are conceptualizations of the student learning process. They also . . . provide a visual representation that emphasizes the coherence intended in the benchmarks and invite both teachers and learners to make connections between ideas. The Atlas of Science Literacy [4], published by American Association for

the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Science Teachers Association, features strand maps on topics important to science literacy (e.g., weather and climate, flow of energy in ecosystems, or conservation of matter). Each map consists of node-link representations illustrating a set of relationships between benchmarks organized around a topic (Figure 1). High-level descriptions of the benchmarks are provided in the nodes, while the links depict the interrelationships between benchmarks. Each map contains vertical strands reflecting key ideas in that topic (e.g., heat, water cycle, atmosphere, and climate change are strands within the weather and climate map). Each strand is crossreferenced by grade levels (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) to illustrate how student understanding develops over time (Sumner, 2004). The point is to provide educators with a way to link the videos in the HS-DVL with concepts from the AAAS’ Atlas of Science Literacy. These visual aides are created by the Strand Map Service which is essentially middleware that resides between the digital library and the benchmark service or atlas (Sumner, 2004). The following diagram from Sumner’s Powerpoint presentation illustrates the way the service works residing between the digital library and the benchmark repository and how it relies upon the Concept Space Interchange Protocol (CSIP) Server.

Example of Strand Map:

The actual video footage from the library is actually embedded in the web pages that describe the footage. Each page includes the title of the clip, the clip description, information about the standards the clip represents, a description of the program, a copyright statement and information about the publisher. The length of the clip is given underneath the clip as is a printed transcript of the video in PDF format. The clips play in Windows Media Player and start as soon as the page finishes loading. Normal functions

to control stop, start, fast forward, volume, etc. are offered. There is also a large button that will return the user to their search results. All pages that display video clips are standardized. The HS-DVL only offers one help option – a video tour of the site which is linked from the library’s home page. One of the things that I like best about this site is its simplicity. There are a set number of options and search criteria and not much else. Given that there are only about 1017 video clips in the library, it is fairly easy to find specific clips. The site is visually appealing, uncluttered and is easy to navigate. The videos all differ in length. However, some are fairly long. I was impressed with the speed at which an hour long video loaded on my machine. The quality of the video is excellent. In a couple of cases, I would have liked to have been able to maximize the size of the clip. It does play in a set window that seems a bit small. There are no advanced personalization features in this digital library – one of its major weaknesses. One can only search for, retrieve and watch video footage related to education in the science and technical fields. The Strand Maps provide a different focus on looking at student outcomes. To be honest, trying to use this feature was a bit cumbersome. Some of the maps are available in PDF format. These were easy to use, although I admit to not being entirely sure of what their value is. However, the library offers a strand-map interface which I could not get to work. It requires the Adobe Scalable Vector Graphics plug in. I installed the plug in, but still never say this interface in action. All of the other features used technology that my computer already had installed – Windows Media Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Example of Results Page:

Overall, this digital library is extremely easy to use and has excellent navigation. The biggest challenge to successfully using the site is a true understanding of what it is trying to accomplish. I admit to not knowing anything about benchmarks for SMET

education. This meant I was utterly confused at first while trying to use many of the search criteria. I often relied upon the View All link. I had difficulty using the Quick Search feature because I had no previous knowledge of the types of video footage contained in the archive. Once I became more familiar with the collection, I was able to use this feature successfully. The Harvard-Smithsonian Digital Video Library can also be searched via other search engines including the New England Collections Online (NECO) and the National SMETE Digital Library. One of the advantages of the NECO search engine is that it is possible to see the entire range of metadata associated with the clip. There are links to view the source and to view the original. The link to the original retrieves the web page with the embedded video on the HS-DVL web site. The NSDL search engine is a bit more cumbersome to use. This site indexes much more data than either the NECO or the HS-DVL, so it requires an effort to find items specifically in the HS-DVL collection. Neither site offers the advanced searching capabilities of the HS-DVL site nor do they offer access to the Strand Maps. Ultimately, in order to use the HS-DVL as it was intended to enhance the understanding and teaching of educational, SMET goals for the K-12 crowd, one would be best off using the selection criteria available at the HS-DVL web site. The NECO and NSDL sites would be best for those looking for similar items in other places. One of the core principles of the National SMETE Digital Library’s initiative is to build a repository that is much larger in scope than any one of the digital libraries funded by SMETE individually. As such, collaboration, sharing and interoperability were key concepts to the development of projects that SMETE chose to fund. This required the

adherence to specific protocols and standards. Many of the participating institutions are thus using open source software and standards for their digital libraries. The HarvardSmithsonian Digital Library appears to adhere to such open source principles by using PHP for the underlying web structure of the video collection. Additionally, they employ the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). This allows other sites, including the NECO and the NSDL, to harvest the data and present it in different interfaces. This protocol also aids in both preservation and discovery. Preservation is important because there is a . . . need to periodically transfer digital content from a data repository to one or more trusted digital repositories charged with storing and preserving safety copies of the content. The trusted digital repositories need a mechanism to automatically synchronize with the originating data repository (Van de Sompel, 2004).

Discovery must also be aided because there is a need to use content itself in the creation of services. Examples include search engines that make full-text from multiple data repositories searchable, and citation indexing systems that extract references from the full-text content. Another scenario is the provision of thumbnail versions of high-quality images from cultural heritage collections to external services that build browsing interfaces that include the thumbnails (Van de Sompel, 2004). The use of OAI-PMH is one of the fundamental ways in which digital libraries can achieve interoperability. A record from NECO web site with metadata:

There seemed to be very little information made available about the specifics of the HS-DVL project. The web site for the project is dedicated to the actual content of the library with no references to how the project was achieved, what technology was used or the current state of the project. It seems as if the project is completed. The Center does

add new material to the library when it is produced, but seems to have achieved the goals set out the in original award information, mainly dealing with the organization and classification of the video clips and of linking them to benchmarking standards for STEM education. The Harvard-Smithsonian Digital Video Library is an valuable collection of video footage that is intended to help K-12 educators enhance science, technology, engineering and math education. It is an extremely focused collection that is an important part of the National SMETE Digital Library and the drive to improve our nation’s science outcomes for today’s K-12 students. It is also an excellent example of a digital library, built to serve K-12 educators help their students excel in the STEM subject areas. It is fairly simplistic in nature and easy to use. Its data is portable and makes for a valuable addition to the National SMETE Digital Library.

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