Telling Great Stories: An NSDL Content and Communications System for Aggregation, Display, and Distribution of News and Features

Education digital libraries contain cataloged resources as well as contextual information about innovations in the use of educational technology, exemplar stories about community activities, and news from various user communities that include teachers, students, scholars, and developers. Long-standing library traditions of service, preservation, democratization of knowledge, rich discourse, equal access, and fair use are evident in library communications models that both pull in and push out contextual information from multiple sources integrated with editorial production processes. This paper argues that a dynamic narrative flow [1] is enabled by effective management of complex content and communications in a decentralized web-based education digital library making publishing objects such as aggregations of resources, or selected parts of objects [4] accessible through a Content and Communications System. Providing services that encourage patrons to reuse, reflect out, and contribute resources back [5] to the Library increases the reach and impact of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). This system is a model for distributed content development and effective communications for education digital libraries in general.