This is the first year funding of a five year Cooperative Agreement award. This Project is a component of the InterLib collaboration between University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Stanford University. The combined interLib technologies will be demonstrated on the emerging California Digital Library (CDL), and on a testbed developed by the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
The Alexandria Digital Earth Prototype (ADEPT) Project will develop digital library environments and services that are based on the Digital Earth Metaphor. The services will support access to, and use of, heterogeneous digital information distributed across the Internet on the basis of georeference as well as other criteria. In particular the system will support the construction and use of personalized digital information collections called Iscapes (Information Landscapes). A variety of services will be provided that allow Iscapes to be developed as information service layers in which diverse information resources can be organized, accessed, and used. A characteristic feature of Iscapes is the creation of special meta-information resources indicating the joint usability of the items in the personalized collections. The project will focus on developing services that support the construction and use of Iscapes for use in learning contexts and for the creation of knowledge across a range of disciplines, including the arts, humanities, and social, physical, ] and biological sciences. The Project will focus specific attention on evaluating the effect of ADEPT services on learning in undergraduate classroom situations.
