NSF Digital Libraries Part of New Yahoo! Search Effort

As part of a new effort by Yahoo! to expand the breadth and depth of the Web content it searches, several digital libraries supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) will make their collections of Supreme Court audio, Babylonian artifacts and science education resources accessible through Yahoo!’s enhanced search capabilities.

„NSF supports many innovative digital library collections, and we are pleased to have these unique national and international resources included in Yahoo!’s effort to provide the best and most relevant Web content to its users,“ said Steve Griffin, program director for digital library activities in NSF’s Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering directorate.

Three NSF-supported digital libraries are among the first non-commercial partners in Yahoo!’s new program designed to increase comprehensiveness, maintain the most up-to-date data and improve relevancy of search results for its users.

The NSF’s National Science Digital Library (http://www.nsdl.org/) integrates more than 250 merit-reviewed resource collections, organized in support of science, technology, engineering and mathematics education at all levels.

Northwestern University’s online OYEZ project (http://www.oyez.org/) contains more than 2,000 hours of Supreme Court audio, including all audio recorded since 1995. NSF support will allow the OYEZ archive eventually to provide public access to all Supreme Court audio—more than 6,000 hours.

UCLA’s Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (http://cdli.ucla.edu/), which has been supported by NSF, is pursuing the systematic digital documentation and electronic publication of approximately 500,000 cuneiform tablets that document Babylonian history from its beginnings around 3500 B.C. until the time of Christ.

NSF Program Officers:
Stephen Griffin, (703) 292-8918, sgriffin@nsf.gov
Lee Zia, (703) 292-5140, lzia@nsf.gov