CWIS (pronounced see-wis) is software to assemble, organize, and share collections of data about resources, like Yahoo! or Google Directory but conforming to international and academic standards for metadata. CWIS was specifically created to help build collections of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) resources and connect them into NSF's National Science Digital Library, but can be (and is being) used for a wide variety of other purposes.
Some of the features of CWIS include:
- resource annotations and ratings (a la Amazon)
- keyword searching (with phrase and exclusion support a la Google)
- fielded searching
- recommender system (a la Amazon)
- OAI 2.0 export (with oai_dc and nsdl_dc schemas)
- RSS feed support
- integrated metadata editing tool
- user-definable schema (comes with full qualified Dublin Core)
- prepackaged taxonomies (includes GEM Subject taxonomy)
- user interface themes
- turnkey installation
CWIS requires a web server that supports PHP and MySQL. The software is designed to run on a LAMP (Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP) platform, but is also being run in the field on OS X, Solaris, and FreeBSD. For more specific requirements for the current version, see the Downloads page.
