The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) has implemented an information infrastructure to disseminate government funded research results and to provide content as well as services to support the integration of research and education in materials. This paper describes how we are enabling two-way communication between a digital repository and open-source collaborative tools, such as wikis, to support users in materials research and education in the creation and re-use of compelling learning resources. A search results plug-in for MediaWiki has been developed to display relevant search results from the Fedora-based MatDL repository in the Soft Matter Wiki established and developed by MatDL and its partners. Wiki-to-repository information transfer has also been facilitated by mapping the metadata associated with resources originating in the wiki onto Dublin Core (DC) metadata elements and making the metadata and resources available in the repository.

Materials informatics integrated into undergraduate and graduate materials education is a key component and critical issue to address the nation’s shortage of well-trained, future scientists.

The NSF supported National Science Digital Library's (NSDL) Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) is a consortium of organizations building an information infrastructure and assuming stewardship of significant content and services to support the integration of education and research in materials science (MS). The consortium includes: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kent State University, MIT, University of Michigan, Iowa State University, and Purdue University. Additionally, this Pathways project is facilitating the dissemination of resources generated by government-funded MS collaborations: Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Teams, Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers, and International Materials Institutes. The NSDL MatDL Pathway provides: 1) tools to describe, manage, exchange, archive, and disseminate data among national and international government-funded materials teams and centers; 2) support for open access development of modeling and simulation tools; 3) services and content for virtual labs in large undergraduate introductory science courses; and 4) workspace for collaborative development of core undergraduate MS teaching materials. By serving as a dedicated hub for the materials research community to support communication and interactions among its members, MatDL offers the opportunity to create learning objects based on recent research, as well as convenient access to shared resources and learning objects. By building collaborations with materials teams and centers, MatDL is creating opportunities to facilitate exchange and eventual dissemination of research output as well as to incorporate recent research into teaching materials. The emerging field of nanoscience is having a revolutionary impact on science and technology. At the nanometer level, researchers are assembling building blocks with unique structures and functions which mimic self-organization processes observed in biological systems such as proteins. These building blocks are “the ‘atoms’ and ‘molecules’ of tomorrow's materials, self-assembling into unique structures made possible solely by their design” (Glotzer, Solomon, & Kotov, 2004). MatDL is working with materials scientists to capture optimal description of nanoscale computer simulation output as research codes are executed. Metadata capture routines have been incorporated into the simulation codes of a University of Michigan research group which is piloting and testing this effort as part of their normal workflow. Currently, input file parameters and values for the group's master simulation code and all of its modules are captured as Dublin Core (DC) metadata in XML format upon execution of the code. The DC metadata transparently describes all associated parameters and values necessary to identify, describe, or recreate the simulation. The metadata includes subject terms drawn from the input parameters which also lay the foundation for the development of a community-built, web-accessible dictionary/thesaurus on assembly of nanosystems intended for an audience of upper level undergraduates or beginning graduate level researchers. Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSECs) serve as a focal point for materials research and education. They are also responsible for conducting a range of outreach and public education activities. MatDL has recently begun collaborating with Cornell's well-established and successful MRSEC, Cornell Center on Materials Research (CCMR), to explore approaches for improving CCMR resource discovery as well as strategies for introducing CCMR resources to new audiences. This work has started with an important but manageable collection of existing REU papers and presentations from CCMR. As part of its mission, the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory (MSEL) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is developing powerful new tools for materials theory and modeling. In collaboration with MatDL, MSEL is pursuing new approaches to developing and disseminating its software tools. MatDL has created a flexible workspace for NIST MSEL and its external collaborators to use for “community” development of materials modeling and simulation codes, beginning with FiPy, an object oriented, partial differential equation solver, written in Python, based on a standard finite volume approach (Guyer, Wheeler, & Warren, 2005). As part of the NSF NSDL, MatDL is providing a branded, trusted, non-commercial, and neutral site supporting open source code development without the extensive security barriers that inhibit external collaborations required for servers residing within government institutions, such as NIST. By acting as a hub for research and education in the MS community, MatDL is promoting interactions between research code developers and educators interested in incorporating the codes into teaching materials or in having students write code modules as part of their coursework. Engineering and computer science program accreditation requires demonstrated effectiveness of laboratory training (ABET, 2004). However, difficulties such as growing enrollments and physical space limitations often make it impractical to offer physical labs to undergraduates. Virtual labs (VLs) may provide a workable alternative, allowing students to achieve many laboratory learning objectives (e.g., experiment, data analysis, design) identified at the ABET/Sloan Colloquy (Feisel & Peterson, 2002). Online environments (such as digital libraries) may not only provide needed VL support but also offer new opportunities for undergraduate science classes. In 2005, MatDL participated in a small VL pilot study. Self-assessment survey results from eight MIT students indicated that the VL experience gave them a greatly improved understanding of concepts and mastery of skills covered in lecture (Bartolo, Lowe, Sadoway, & Trapa, 2005) for many of the ABET expressed laboratory learning objectives. Students also expressed positive opinions of the potential value of MatDL in supporting a VL experience and in accomplishing additional educational objectives. Currently, MatDL is examining scalability to determine if VLs can be offered to a class of 500 students, such as MIT's Introduction to Solid State Chemistry. It is making available a variety of tested learning objects relevant to a VL experience. Additionally, MatDL is archiving student output, providing students with practical experience in licensing and publishing their own work as well as additional opportunities to learn from the publications of their peers. Collaborative development and sharing of MS teaching resources would serve MS educators by greatly reducing difficult and time-consuming tasks such as individually preparing problems and assignments, writing handouts to explain difficult phenomena and authoring software to aid in teaching. Making an archive of such of pedagogical resources widely available would facilitate STEM education both when teaching MS topics to students within the field as well as to those of other disciplines. MatDL began work in this area by establishing a collaborative workspace for educational resources related to transport phenomena, with an initial focus on materials processing and performance. The Transport Phenomena Archive (Powell & Bartolo, 2006) currently consists of more than 75 resources such as problems, handouts, and course-related software. Content of the original Archive is expected to expand to at least 1,000 resources incrementally over the next four years. An international Editorial Board is being assembled to review contributions with rigorous pedagogical standards for adoption and to steward the Archive into the future. Content will also expand to other course areas in MS such as thermodynamics and kinetics to mechanical, electrical and biological materials to laboratory subjects. MatDL is part of the National Science Digital Library and is supported by National Science Foundation grants DUE-0333520 and DUE-0532831. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

This poster describes a collaboration involving two NSDL projects: the Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) and the iVia Data Fountains Project. MatDL is testing and providing feedback for refinement of the iVia tools while streamlining its metadata assignment process.

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) has implemented an information infrastructure to disseminate government funded research results and to provide content as well as services to support the integration of research and education in materials. This poster describes how we are integrating a digital repository into open-source collaborative tools, such as wikis, to support users in materials research and education as well as interactions between the two areas. A search results plug-in for MediaWiki has been developed to display relevant search results from the MatDL repository in the Soft Matter Wiki established and developed by MatDL and its partners. Collaborative work with the NSDL Core Integration team at Cornell University is also in progress to enable information transfer in the opposite direction, from a wiki to a repository.

The National Science Foundation created the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) in order to establish a technical, communal, and organizational framework for access to high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning at all levels of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. As part of the NSDL, the Materials Digital Library (MatDL) Pathway focuses specifically on serving the materials science (MS) community with a target audience that includes MS undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and researchers. MatDL is a collaborative effort involving the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Kent State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Iowa State University, and Purdue University. Our network of collaborations also includes a Nanoscience Interdisciplinary Research Team, Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, and International Materials Institute. A primary goal of MatDL is to bring materials science research and education closer together. MatDL provides innovative uses of digital libraries and the web as educational media in the MS community with particular emphasis on providing: 1) tools to describe, manage, exchange, archive, and disseminate scientific data 2) workspace for open access development of modeling and simulation tools 3) services and content for virtual labs in large undergraduate introductory science courses, and 4) workspace for collaborative development of core undergraduate MS teaching resources for emerging areas. This paper will provide an overview of the NSDL MatDL Pathway, details about specific aspects of the project, as well as interactions between research and education.

The NSDL materials digital library pathway (MatDL) is working with materials scientists to capture, in Dublin Core XML format, optimal description of nanoscale computer simulation output as research codes are executed. The long term goal of the work is to enable users, such as research groups and students, to efficiently and effectively manage their results for internal use, for exchange with outside collaborators, for use in educational settings, and for submissions to digital libraries

The NSDL Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) is utilizing a wiki to facilitate the expert community-driven development of a controlled vocabulary on assembly of nanosystems. Vocabulary development is being initiated using preferred subject terms gathered from Dublin Core metadata captured during the execution of nanoscale computer simulation codes of a research group whose members are defining terms and relationships between terms.

Student self-assessment survey results indicate that a virtual lab experience improved understanding of many key laboratory learning objectives and that the Materials Digital Library (MatDL) has potential value in supporting a virtual lab

This pilot project investigates facilitating the development of the Semantic Web for e-learning through a practical example, using Materials Property Data Markup Language (MatML) to provide materials property data to a web-based application program. Property data for 100 materials is marked up with MatML and used as an input format for an application program. Students use the program to generate graphs showing selected properties for different materials. Selected graphs are submitted to the Materials Digital Library (MatDL) so that successive classes may be informed by earlier work to encourage new discoveries.

Digital repositories can be catalysts for new knowledge by providing information space and tools to facilitate the work of students, educators, or scientists. The NSF NSDL Materials Digital Library (MatDL) is adapting existing open source tools, such as an image gallery and a version control system, to meet the needs of users within the materials science community. The tools are being modified to make submission to MatDL an easy step within a user's existing workflow and to avoid redundant effort. These satellite services provided by MatDL are intended to become an integral part of the user's laboratory or workspace. The paper investigates whether digital repositories can expand their communities and collections by building tools that integrate a digital repository into researchers' workspaces. In the long term, it is anticipated that making submissions to MatDL an easy part of users' regular workflow will increase the likelihood that users will submit resources to the repository. Ultimately, the goal of integrating a repository into users' workspaces is to enhance the impact between research and education. Initial experience of providing these tools and responding to user feedback through MatDL is discussed.

The Materials Digital Library project, as part of the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library program, researches efficient creation and dissemination of materials information using a multifaceted approach: collection of materials content, with an emphasis on soft matter; construction of authoring tools for improved delivery, and; use of materials content in a digital library.

There is currently a lack of rich description attached to materials science content available on the Web as well as usercentered tools to attach such description. Dublin Core (DC) metadata and Materials Markup Language (MatML) are suggested as a means of providing materials science content information important for resource discovery and exchange. Domain specific tools are proposed for allowing authors to more easily supply this information. Such tools are expected to greatly increase the likelihood that appropriate metadata and markup will be attached to resources. Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) are offered as possible mechanisms for representing multiple descriptive views.

Scientific investigation produces significant amounts of rich multimedia digital data. Digital libraries provide the ability to collect resources that were never part of traditional library collections, such as materials microstructures. However, in order for these resources to be included in digital libraries end users, such as bench scientists and science students as resource producers, need to be able to record data, describe resources using appropriate scientific terminology, and tag them with metadata for better retrieval. New opportunities for collection development would arise by bringing national and international initiatives that bridge heterogeneous information streams through standards more directly to end users as creators of information. This poster presents preliminary findings on material science researchers, both experts and novices, as creators of information using Dublin Core (DC) metadata to provide access to information at an early stage of the scientific process. Because DC has been specifically designed to address the problems of resource discovery on the Internet (Hillman, 2001), it is expected to successfully provide material science researchers with a relatively quick and easy means of producing fundamental metadata elements. DC is a general approach that can be used with all formats across domains. It has been designed to be simple enough that someone who is not an expert in cataloguing can independently create and maintain metadata records. Long-term goals of this investigation are to study three fundamental questions: (1) Is it feasibly to use DC to describe laboratory data (i.e., does it adequately capture necessary information)? (2) How can the individual researcher best manage the information generated in the laboratory? and (3) How can the information best be disseminated across different disciplines and institutions beyond the laboratory? Answering the first question would necessitate examination of other metadata alternatives, if DC were proven incapable of capturing essential descriptive information or supporting important functions. While DC is intended to promote cross-domain discovery and accessibility of networked information, it is recognized that more precise descriptions will often be required within different information communities (Hillman, 2001). In order to allow for extensibility, a modular approach may be implemented, in which DC may be used in conjunction with other schemas. Materials Markup Language (MatML) is one currently available means of associating very detailed descriptive information with materials property data (Begley, 2003). Answering the second and third questions would encourage development of information management tools for the end user to support author-generated submissions in digital libraries. The sciences face a significant information management dilemma (Greenberg, Sutton, & Campbell, 2003) resulting from the quantity, complexity, and diversity of scientific information resources currently being generated. One component of this considerable problem is the initial encoding of preliminary laboratory data by bench scientists as well as science students, as information creators for use in information management and retrieval systems. Specific information must be described, organized, and disseminated quickly and easily in a systematic way so that researchers, educators, and students across the disciplines in the science community can have access to the information. Tagging individual units of laboratory data as they are generated, should ultimately allow individual researchers or members of interdisciplinary research teams to retrieve more meaningful information on different aspects of work in progress. Such enhanced capability should improve discovery, prevent duplication of effort, and increase productivity. Using a metadata standard such as DC is also expected to allow other interested parties, such as researchers, educators, and students to readily access an approved subset of the material. Furthermore immediate treatment of lab output is expected to improve the organization, and reusability of the data, and to facilitate the process of including items in digital libraries in the future. In this poster, we report qualitative results obtained during the beta testing of a metadata/markup generating/editing tool used to facilitate author-generated submissions to a materials microstructures repository. “The microstructure of a material is an image of the (usually) complex ensemble of polycrystalline grains, second phases, cracks, pores, and other features occurring on length scales large compared to atomic sizes” (Carter, Langer, & Fuller, 2002, ¶ 1). Authors contributing to the repository will include research scientists in the field (experts) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology as well as, undergraduate/graduate materials science students in the classroom (novices). Recommendations of the participants regarding the functioning of the tool and the usefulness of the resulting output will be used to refine plans to use the tool. The novices will be drawn from the University of Michigan's “Computational Nanoscience of Soft Matter” course. The goals of the course are to introduce students to new approaches to materials design and fabrication through cutting-edge, simulation-based research in nanoscience and nanotechnology. The course is taught in a lecture/lab format with the class assigned in teams of two and three workstations. The course introduces concepts of scientific computation, provides students with the background and skills to critically read and evaluate materials simulation literature, and gives students a fundamental understanding of simulation methods needed to use commercial materials simulation software packages intelligently and appropriately as well as develop their own codes. Each nanostructure is characterized by a unique set of information that must accompany the nanostructure for it to be useful to a student or materials scientist or engineer. To fully describe a particular simulation necessitates information on the specific simulation method and parameters, for example, force fields between nanoparticles, polymers, and solvent, approximations, geometric parameters of the nanoparticle and polymer, temperature and other thermodynamic variables, volume fraction of each species, initial condition, as well as cooling schedule and equilibration time. Historically, there has been no mechanism for conveniently and efficiently tagging nanostructures with this data, and storing them in a logical organizational scheme that would allow for intelligent sorting and access. Providing students and research scientists with a practical means of contributing to the repository is expected to remedy this problem, allowing them to make their work available in both research and education settings. Since materials scientists interact closely with the fields of biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics, the participants will also be able to integrate the digital output of their work into other research. Novices and experts will store, describe, and tag the microstructures generated in their respective laboratories using the metadata/markup generating/editing tool. Digital output from computer simulations as they relate to the modeling of a range of materials will be included. Both groups will use research and commercial simulation software. The metadata will include processing and statistical information to characterize the microstructures as materials scientists would in order to increase discovery and reusability of the data by the scientific community. In conclusion, large amounts of data will be tagged using the metadata/markup generating/editing tool. Feedback from experts will enable refinements to the prototype tool. The project will compare author-generated metadata describing materials microstructures by experts and novices. The essential questions to be examined are: 1.) How effective is DC for general discovery and retrieval of laboratory data, and 2.) How well do authors with domain knowledge and no cataloguing training, provide initial description of materials property information. The material is based upon work sponsored by the National Science Foundation National Science Digital Library Program under Award Number DUE 0121545 and the National Institute of Standards and Technology 70NANB1H0005 We would like to thank Professor Sharon C. Glotzer, University of Michigan, for her invaluable guidance and contributions to the project.

Materials Property Data Markup Language (MatML) provides detailed materials property information necessary for the exchange of materials science digital resources among users. Dublin Core (DC) provides a consistent generic characterization of content important for resource discovery. The feasibility of reusing detailed information provided by MatML to supply DC metadata is explored. Preliminary data gathered from three examples of materials science resources indicates that MatML tags may be successfully mapped to DC elements. A prototype web-based authoring tool designed to assist authors in generating MatML as well as to map MatML information to DC elements is discussed.

Presented at the CRIS2002 Conference in Kassel.-- 8 pages.-- Contains: Conference paper (PDF) + PPT presentation.