This is a proposal for a project that responds to two main priorities of the Digital Libraries Initiative, Phase 2 (DLI-2): testbeds and applications for undergraduate education, and human-centered and collections-based research. The project has three goals that address areas of interest for Digital Libraries. The first is the reuse or repurposing of materials in a Digital Library. We propose to develop methods to reuse a common body of instructional materials in computer graphics and visualization for several different disciplines by using technology based on the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The second focuses on the improvement of navigation in our Digital Library by using Information Visualization techniques based on XML and 3D Web graphics. The third addresses the creation and development of a sense of community and enhanced collaboration among the users by using Web based shared 3D virtual worlds. The common theme of these three goals is to enhance the usability and flexibility of the Digital Library and to address some of the needs of its community. All three will use standard Web based technologies and will be platform independent. This project is closely related to a collateral DLI-2 proposal from a consortium lead by the COLLEGIS Research Institute (CRI).
This project will build upon past ACM Special Interest Group in Graphics (SIGGRAPH)-NSF cooperative efforts, current ACM SIGGRAPH projects, and will leverage the large industry effort of creating tools for XML and related applications. The project will be a joint effort between the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee (SEC) and the Hypermedia and Visualization Laboratory (HVL) at Georgia State University (GSU) and will be focused on the SEC Digital Library (SECDL) and its community of users. The SECDL contains a large amount of peer reviewed multimedia material and is rapidly growing in size. It is fully supported by the SEC and is thus a stable resource, i.e., no support is requested in this project for the growth and maintenance of the SECDL. The SECDL is an excellent testbed for research in Digital Library technologies that, once developed, can be extended to other sites. Thus, NSF has the opportunity to leverage a substantial ongoing project.
The SEC has a project, first envisioned in 1990, the goal of which was to create a hypermedia learning environment that could be used by the entire SIGGRAPH community, i.e., by educators and students from all the disciplines interested in computer graphics and/or visualization. We envisioned a 3D-information space that users could traverse to seek information. We wanted to be able to present different views of the material for the different educational audiences, i.e., a computer science view, an engineering view, art view, etc. Over the succeeding years, with support from both NSF and the SEC, we have created a rich web-based set of educational resources that resides in the SECDL. However, we were never able to accomplish our original goal because of technology limitations. In this project, using XML and its related technologies, we will finally be able to achieve our vision. The result will not only be a valuable educational resource but also an excellent example for other disciplines to use in implementing their educational Digital Libraries.