The National Science Digital Library (NSDL), being constructed via a large number of grants awarded by the National Science Foundation, will capitalize on a variety of innovations and research results to help educators make more effective use of the computing and networking resources now available. In particular, the NSDL will add structure and new capabilities to the World Wide Web, with a focus on supporting communities that improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics education nationwide.

Though its breadth is modest, the December 2002 initial release of the NSDL showcases resources that offer new approaches to key educational topics, including: biology and life science, Earth systems, engineering, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, and computer science. More important, the initial release serves as an invitation for wider participation by laying the groundwork for large-scale interoperability among distributed systems. Such systems, operated by a diverse array of partners and linked via open-system principles, will provide the NSDL an extraordinarily rich set of collections and services.