An article in this week's issue of Science raises the question of whether NSF's investment of $175 million in the National Digital Science Library has paid off.
Author Jeffrey Mervis ("NSF Rethinks Its Digital Library") says "the payoff from NSF's investment, which has averaged almost $18 million a year [right], has been hard to quantify. Its biggest advocates admit that relatively few educators and researchers have even heard of NSDL, much less visited the Web site or contributed material. It's proven to be no match for Google as a search engine for finding good sites. And there's no evidence to date that NSDL has improved student learning. Although NSF officials insist that NSDL has been a success, the agency is in the process of reducing its support for digital libraries."
In a companion article, Mervis describes the history of DLESE (Digital Library for Earth Science Education). He reports that "in 2005, after getting a scathing report from a visiting committee on how NSF's $21 million investment had been managed, NSF decided to phase out its support. After much soul-searching, a slimmed-down DLESE found a home in 2007 within UCAR's National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, where it is now part of NCAR's library."
These are two examples of the sustainability challenge, whether it's NSF or other funding. What happens when the funds run out after developing a new capability? How do you maintain cyberinfrastructure after it's built? We are all looking for answers.
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