DLNET's collection area will consist of content in engineering and technology areas such as Aeronautical and Aerospace, Bioengineering, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Environmental, Industrial and Systems, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical, and Mining. In addition, subject areas common to all engineering such as: Information and Communication Technologies, Computational Methods, Engineering Education and Professional Development have been included. Content materials in other engineering and technology areas will also be accepted.

The collection materials in DLNET will be categorized accordingly so as to enable intuitive browsing and content finding. A three-level taxonomy of engineering and technology is being developed concurrently with the collections and archiving process. DLNET's categorization will also be utilized to facilitate the resource contribution process.

DLNET will be hosted at the Alexandria Research Institute of Virginia Tech at http://www.dlnet.vt.edu. Its collection will be based on contents and links provided by contributors ranging from institutions and organizations to individuals such as educators, students and practicing engineers and technologists. Depending on where they are archived, contents will be sourced either from DLNET's repository or directly from the contributor's repository. Contents that are sourced from outside repositories will be accessed through designated URL addresses. Regardless of sourcing, all contents hosted at DLNET will have their metadata residing and published at DLNET.

Contributors submitting or linking to DLNET will be required to provide the minimum in metadata describing their contents. DLNET has adopted the IMS Meta-data Specification, version 1.2.1, as its metadata standard. The following have been specified by DLNET as core metadata elements required to archive and discover contents:

Information about the Contributor

• Author Name
• Email Address
• Department
• Organization
  

Basic

• Title
• Language
• Description
• Keywords
• Date of Creation
  

Educational/Pedagogic Information

• Interactivity Type
• Learning Resource Type
• Interactivity Level
• Intended User
• Context of Use
• Learning Duration

Additional Information

• Format
• Rights
• Classification

The Type describes the kind or genre of the resource. The following types of content materials will be accepted for hosting at DLNET.

Basic

• Narrative Texts, Abstracts
• Diagrams, Figures, Graphs
• Audio and Video Streams
• Tables, Indices

Complex

• Tutorials
• Course Packages
• Theses and Dissertations
• Slides and Presentations (Standard, Multimedia)
• Interactive Simulations
• Algorithms, Subroutines, Software, etc.
• Self-Assessment (Exams, Exercise Problems, Study Guides, Questionnaires)
• Instruction Manuals, Do-it-yourself (DIY) Guides
• Datasets, Databases

Tools

• Computation, Calculation, Conversion
• Data Processing and Visualization
• Simulation and Modeling
• Course Module Building
• Web Instruction
• Web Content Development
• Annotation
• Equation Editors
• Search Engines

The Format describes the technical, physical or digital manifestation of the resource. The following formats will be accepted for hosting at DLNET.

• Text (Plain, Rich-text, Comma-separated, Tab-separated, etc.)
• Markup Language (HTML, SGML, XML)
• Video (mpeg, quicktime, avi, etc.)
• Audio (wav, ra, au, snd, etc.)
• Image (jpeg, gif, tiff, bmp, etc.)
• Application (ms-word, ms-excel, ms-powerpoint, adobe pdf, zip, etc.)
• Scripts, Simulations and Applets (java, perl, matlab, etc.)
• Toolbook-type course modules

NSDL requires collections and content materials to meet the following broad provisions for quality and integrity:

• Be relevant to all aspects of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education, and,
  
  
• Satisfy basic standards of integrity, i.e., collections and contents should not exhibit blatant errors of facts nor attempt to communicate political, religious, or commercial messages. Moreover, they should not exhibit blatant technical failures in displaying the digital resource.

In building the DLNET collection, therefore, the following attributes will be scrutinized to ensure the quality and educational value of learning objects.

• Scientific, mathematical and technical facts: Contents must be based on sound scientific, mathematical and/or technical principles and not on pseudoscientific theories and hypotheses.
  
  
• Educational/pedagogical assessment: Content must meet their stated educational/pedagogical objectives in serving the target audience. Moreover, contents must be designed with the potential for re-use by instructors and course-builders.
  
  
• Clarity and precision: Contents must present material in a clear, coherent and systematic manner. This requires the correct use of language (grammar, punctuation and spelling) as well as the use of consistent and visually appealing elements (labels, buttons, menus and icons) that allow ease of navigation through the material.
  
  
• Ease of playing/viewing LO: Contents must be viewable over currently available platforms and browsers and not require special software or plug-ins and add-ins to run. Similarly, contents must not have hardware limitations (i.e., memory, video, processor speed, etc.)
  

In addition to the relevancy and integrity conditions listed above, DLNET will rank favorably contents that incorporate instruction-aiding tools such as Multimedia and Graphics, Interactive Sessions, Help Sections and References.

NSDL is currently developing the business models and intellectual property rights management tools for addressing the rights issue in the federation of libraries. These models will enable contributors, i.e., authors and publishers, to be rightfully acknowledged and compensated for their work.

Pending the implementation of NSDL's rights management system, DLNET will accept submissions provided they are free or authors owning the copyrights agree to their unrestricted use for personal and educational purposes. DLNET will, however, retain the right to indexing and distribution of the metadata or catalog information. Users will be requested to use the resources as is, i.e., with metadata included, so as to acknowledge authorship and ownership of content.