Tuesday, October 07, 2003

WILMINGTON, NC – The University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s Randall Library and an interdepartmental team consisting of faculty from biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and statistics have received a two-year $425,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study the integration and sustainability of the iLumina Digital Library within UNCW’s Randall Library.

Their project, Integrating Digital Libraries and Traditional Libraries: A Model for Sustaining NSDL Collections, will investigate the issues involved with integrating an existing digital resource repository with a traditional research library. The iLumina/Randall model will be generalized and shared with the wider digital library community as a possible sustainability model for other NSF-funded digital libraries that are affiliated with universities.

iLumina, (http://www.ilumina-dlib.org) is one of 18 featured collections which comprise the National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library or NSDL (http://www.nsdl.org). The iLumina collection currently contains over 1,600 resources in science and mathematics. iLumina is similar to most other NSDL projects in that it is primarily a university-based initiative created through a grant from the NSF to extend and develop innovative digital library technologies and applications.

This research effort will contribute to the advancement of science and mathematics education by developing new software tools and techniques for accessing science and mathematics teaching and learning resources and by training undergraduate student programmers. Students will learn to tailor existing software to meet the specific needs of the project, work as part of a design and development team and apply what they have learned in their courses to a significant project with deadlines and budgets.

Members of the research team include: Sue Cody, associate university librarian for public services; Richard Dillaman, biological sciences; Arlene Hanerfeld, associate university librarian for technical and collection services; Barbara Heath, consultant; Russell Herman, mathematics and statistics; Gabriel Lugo, mathematics and statistics; David McArthur, consultant; Daniel Pfohl, associate university librarian for computing services; James Reeves, chemistry; Ronald Vetter, computer sScience and Charles R. Ward, chemistry.

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For more information contact Dr. Charles Ward in the UNCW Department of Chemistry at 910/962-3216.