about njedl - missions and goals
Mission and Goals:
Our mission is to collect, organize, and make available digitized materials on New Jersey's environment - emanating from the state's government agencies, non-profit and non-governmental organizations, research institutes, and academic departments - for the use of students, scholars, citizens, and government officials. This mission aligns with the State of New Jersey's information clearinghouse initiatives, and will be developed through collaboration with project partners.
Our goals are:
- The implementation of an open digital library, accessible through the world-wide web. This library will consist of digital collections - expanding over time in number and scope - created from converting documents contained in our and other libraries and archives to digital form, and by incorporating materials already in electronic form.
- The establishment of a management structure to coordinate and guide the implementation and ongoing maintenance of the digital library; to set policy regarding participation, funding, development and access; to encourage and facilitate broad involvement.
- The adoption of common standards and best practices to ensure full informational capture; to guarantee universal accessibility and interoperability with New Jersey partner databases; and to facilitate digital preservation and enduring access.
- The establishment and expansion of partnerships with other New Jersey environmental stakeholders in order to realize the benefits of resource sharing and collective expertise.
- The development of policies, practices and outreach services that will encourage full participation by all stakeholders in the development of the digital library, thereby ensuring that the digital library comprises a significant and large corpus of materials.
- The establishment of an on-going system of user evaluation to assess the digital library's collections, usefulness, and usability. (6/2000)
An Internet Scout Report Selection:
 The
New Jersey Environmental Digital Library was selected for inclusion in the Internet
Scout Project on February 9, 2001. According to their review, the NJEDL is "an
excellent resource and a model for other states."* You can read the complete
review on their site, or read about the criteria
for selection used by the Scout Report. The Internet Scout Project is an
NSF-sponsored organization based in the Department of Computer Sciences at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
* Copyright Internet Scout Project, 1994-2000. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
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