GATEWAY TO EDUCATIONAL-MATERIALS (CEM) - METADATA FOR NETWORKED INFORMATION DISCOVERY AND RETRIEVAL

Enhanced access to educational materials on the Internet for the natio ns teachers and students is one of President Clinton's second-term goa ls. In pursuit of this goals the National Library of Education(2) (NLE ) identified lesson plans and teacher guides as a critical area in whi ch library and information science expertise should be applied in orde r to improve the organization and accessibility of large collections o f educational materials that are already available on various federal, state, university, non-profits and commercial Internet sites. The U.S . Department of Education(3) and the NLE charged the ERIC Clearinghous e on Information and Technology(4) at Syracuse University with the tas k of spearheading a project to develop an operational framework to pro vide the nation's teachers with ''one-stop/any-stop'' access to this v ast pool of educational materials. The goal of the Gateway to Educatio nal Materials(5) project (GEM) is to achieve this goal through develop ment and deployment of a metadata element set and accompanying procedu res for its use. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All right s reserved.