9615691 Pollock The Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated (ASTC) proposes a two-year pilot project (November 1996-October 1998) entitled Making Sense of Information: An Electronic Library of Environmental Exhibitions. This project will result in a prototype electronic library of exhibit-based science resources on environmental themes accessible via the World Wide Web. The electronic library will assist museum professionals in sharing exhibit resources, and enhance access to those resources by teachers and students. Science Center Teams from two leading science centers-the Exploratorium (San Francisco) and the Brooklyn Children's Museum-will work in close collaboration with ASTC staff to create and test models and frameworks for documenting scientific resources on the WEB. Consultants and a Project Review Team will contribute perspectives from other Internet-based science education efforts. This collaborative project will enable ASTC to leverage the considerable investment already made by NSF and other funders in two major exhibitions related to environmental systems now in the final stages of development and scheduled to begin nationwide tours through ASTC beginning in 1997. They are: Breaking Ground, an exhibition about plants and people from the Brooklyn Children's Museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; and Turbulent Landscapes: The Natural Forces That Shape Our World, an exhibition from the Exploratorium about self-organization in nature, including phenomena like clouds and blowing sand dunes. The electronic resource developed in this project will enhance the outreach of science center exhibitions, expand science center educational programming, and develop evaluation results for two traveling exhibitions. The project will result in three principal outcomes: * Models and frameworks for the electronic documentation of science museum exhibitions on the World Wide Web; * Increasing efficiency and speed through which science centers share exhibit ideas and r esources; and * Enhanced access to exhibit-based science resources available via the World Wide Web to a projected 5,000 museum professionals, 25,000 students in 1,000 classrooms, and 1,000,000 World Wide Web users in the U.S. and abroad. The long-term goal of this pilot project is to provide the basis for classroom teacher training in using exhibit-based electronic resources for science education. Evaluation will focus on the extent to which this new electronic resource can enhance access and exchange of valuable intellectual and cultural resources both within the museum community and between museums and schools, locally and nationally. Ultimately, the resources developed in its project will be disseminated and implemented through the interactions of teacher-practitioners, technology and science consultants, researchers, the Associations of Science-Technology Centers, and 475 museum members of ASTC. ***