Slashdot Mirror
NSF Works Toward A Digital Science Library
An anonymous reader writes "USA Today has an article on the effort of 'More than 100 teams of educators nationwide are working with the National Science Foundation to develop what they hope will be the nation's most comprehensive digital library for the sciences.'" The article describes this library as intended to "support science education at all levels, from pre-kindergarten through postdoctoral research."
*finally* coming true? At my US taxpayers expense? Thanks, slashdot, I'm gonna keep an eye on this one!
C|N>K
Now can someone send the URL of their search page to the USPTO!
Of course, you will have to get background checks to make sure you are completely american.
"Hey check this guy out. One of his great-grandparents come from France"
"Terrorist. Notifiy CIA"
Leave your wheat fields, leave your back street shops, your fishing boats. Leave your offices in the tall skycrapers. Leave all that is routine and commonplace, and come with us for a while. Come with us to where man has never been, but where he will go, as certain as the passing of time.
Come with us to the moon.
The rocket is waiting.
The internet is supposed to be an interactive database of everything Classic art and Literature, science, etc.
no big sig
Ermmm... that digital library is basically a search engine for the sciences. And all it does is give you links to other sites. I can find the same information and more with GOOGLE. So what's the difference?
What a waste of funding, eh?
But how many Libraries of Congress will it be?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
There is an open project currently underway to create an open encyclopedia avalible for all that I and several hundred others are currently working on,It's called the wikipedia, It uses the wiki-docuemntation system to create a collabarated pool of knowledge!
Anyone can help, so if you got a bit of knowlege thats not in there, add it to the book. Its constant proofreading gives the articles a very high and consistent value.
You can find it here
..something of that sort for mathematics on The Math Forum It works moderately well. If you want an answer to a well-defined question, go there.
:-) nature of those databases and general non-linearity of the field. I do not quite know where this thought is going, but I hope someone will elaborate :-)
There is always a tension between linear, or nested, or hierarchical... still "linear-like"
Wonderful, now we all (or nobody cuz congress will probably lock it up tight for having sesetive information like how to make a nuke) can find out stuff like the thermal breakdown of carcinogens in hydrodyanmic 5th dimensional space! Or why is the sky blue.
I'm pretty sure not many people would complain/yawn if 100 teams of people were making the world's largest pr0n database! Everyone could contribute to that, in one way or another.
Science: if it's not in a "scientific" calculator you don't need to know it!
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
NSF Works Toward A Digital Science Library? More like CELDA!
"His great great grandfather was a guy named Lafeytte. That guy was a fuckin' international *revolutionary*. Time to wheel out the Black Maria."
KFG
Wikipedia is a collaborative Wiki project to produce a free and complete encyclopedia in every language. The project started in January 2001 and is already working on 97179 articles in the English version, with more being added and improved all the time. Anyone can edit any article right now, without even having to log in.
The content of Wikipedia is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it is free and will remain so forever.
The database side, and the search engine!
--------
Free your mind.
Wouldn't this make it easier for the terrorists or our enemies from obtaining hard-earned and precious scientific knowledge? I think the intention to share with the general public is good but shouldn't more precautions be given to save this information being so accessible to people we don't want it to be.
... with states that mandate Creation education in public schools?
I personally think the idea is good, but when states can mandate that schools use science books that teach Creationism, then either the database will be required to conform (very bad), the schools will not be able to use the database (bad), or the students will have the fun of laughing at their state legislators who mandated that the schools teach bad science (best possible result).
Then again, I could be wrong. God may smite me with a bolt of lightning today and call me to task for my words. I don't expect it, but then I wouldn't would I?
-Rusty
You never know...
One of the greatest impediments to independent research is inaccessibility to current journals. Unless tied to a major university or a wealthy backer, it is very expensive tp keep up with current research since most of the technical journals are private and rather expensive. The Library of Congress should be used to facilitate a digital archive of current research (maybe allowing a few weeks for publishers to make money first?) in order to promote more independent scientific research. I work in a cancer research lab over the summers and have personally experienced the frustration of tracking papers only to find that my employer does not have a hard copy and does not subscribe to the electronic edition. Does anyone else have similar stories that they care to share?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
... after they replace the smoking ruin of a server they now have.
"The idea is to come to the NSDL, where you could find some good brain pictures and know where they came from," Saylor said. "They would have a certain level of authority. Every collection is identified for the user."
If they can pull that off, then the library could be very interesting.
Sex - Find It
Terrorists could have access to such information anyway via the hard copies of such journals. Riyadh, Tehran, Jerusalem, and numerous other Arabic cities have large universities that hold subscriptions to such journals whether they are Japanese, American, European, etc. Going to the library may take a little more time but data like how to build nuclear weapons etc. was published even 20 years ago, so if they want the knowledge they can easily get it anyway.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
autopr0n
Second time 2day ive seen it, some new nonsensical troll, or does it have some meaning?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
To me, the internet should be about the free exchange of information, and individuals making their own decisions about what is appropriate.
Because it raises the possibility of having the Ultimate Textbook. It is currently arduous to find comprehensive, well-developed resources for science. That's why 97% of my undergrad physics education is being done with dead-tree technology, and 3% is being done with email, mathematica, physlink, etc. This is the second recent big step in the right direction, the first being MIT's recent program. Soon, teachers and students will have quicker access to the meat, without being forced to endure a deluge of thousands of indistinct links, etc.
Experience has shown over and over again that you can create wonderful science books, lab curricula, etc., but they won't work well in the classroom if the teachers are unqualified.
There are two things that need to change: (1) K-12 math and science teachers need to get paid more money, so that the career is competitive with the other job options available to a person with a math or science degree. (2) States need to get more serious about having high expectations for students. Right now, students tend to limp through lots of math courses without having the faintest idea of what they're doing. That makes it a pretty unattractive career if you're thinking od teaching high-school math: you get a bunch of students who aren't ready to do the stuff you're supposed to be teaching them.
Find free books.
... when there are still school districts that are anti-science if it does anything to contradict creationism. I mean, if it can be controlled by true believers in science, I can see such a thing working, but if subscribing schools/school districts start objecting and censoring it, then we have a big, big problem.
Don't get me wrong, I was the kid who was dissecting things in special curriculum science classes at age 10, and I would have loved to have had such available to me. But if dissent from religious elements prevading school districts gets in the way, I don't see this working at all.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
i remember one time i was looking for an ebook on wormhole physics by kip thorne and this spambot came out of nowhere and nearly took my leg off
Yikes - they should have a look at Project Gutenberg to see how a Digital Library is built - cheap, effective and very accessible. Now there is a Digital Library worthy of the name.
Stoptional
Newsflash on the Goatse Effect: Goatse man is not a man!! That gaping hole is the vagina of a hermaphrodite.
So, who owns the rights to this information? I understand that government research becomes public domain (i.e. no copyright) if it is published, but that's not necessarily true about government funded programs. Submitting your research, information, or paper to a publication usually gives copyright to the publication. Will the same hold true here? I hope not. And that same sort of stuff when done as a student or faculty member of an educational institution usually gives the institution the copyrights. If these educators submit information, does the repository get the copyrights or does it remain with the institution (requiring the institution's permission for inclusion in the repository)?
"NSF Works". ;P
Is this link NSFW, or what?
Gaybo. 14. You.
Citeseer is the best free computer science digital library. Every computer scientist should have that site bookmarked!
World of Science and World of Mathematics covers Astronomy, Biography,Chemistry, Mathematics,and Physics. It's a public service resource by Wolfram Research, the Mathematica people.
Interesting, my company is involved in a grant with the National Science Foundation to produce a multimedia database primarily for medical information which is all professionally cataloged so as to accept/reject submitted multimedia based on the quality and accuracy of the information the contributor provides. Anyway the goal is to give educators and students a place to share and find information with 100% signal, and no noise. It uses an established, focused, and standard vocabulary (Medical Subject Headings) as well as the usual keyword-based searching.
Reinventing the wheel, it seems (sigh).
-Sou|cuttr
The first thing I thought of when I read that headline was that this was about the Northern Separatist Front from Deus Ex. A great game, but every time they mentioned "NSF" (terrorist organization, in the game) I could only think that the National Science Foundation was out to get me. So now, I always get the two confused!
:-)
can be found at www.ulib.org. The Universal Library will have a million books online within a few years, and many more after that. Check it out yo!