Atmospheric Visualization Collection (AVC) Scope Statement

Document Purpose

This document describes the Atmospheric Visualization Collection (AVC) and the resources it provides to the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE). The purpose of this scope and policy statement is to describe AVC:

• Goals
• Policy
• Contacts
• Terms of Use
• Quality Assurance
• Persistence Plan

This scope statement is provided in order to assist: 

• Users in determining if AVC is a likely place to successfully find materials they need.
• Developers in determining if AVC collaborative environments are the appropriate repositories for their work

Goals of AVC

AVC is conceived as an information system dedicated to the collection, enhancement, and distribution of materials that facilitate research and learning about the atmosphere through the use of the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) data set.  AVC will support atmospheric educational and research along numerous dimensions:

• In the development of high-quality materials for instruction at all levels and covering atmospheric components of the Earth system.
• In the development of ARM data images of high-quality for research and educational use at all levels and covering all ARM geophysical focus areas.
• Through the development of visual interfaces into the ARM data images, allowing users basic visual data mining capability.
• Through the development of discovery and distribution systems to efficiently find and use materials encompassed by the AVC.
• By providing support services to help users most effectively use materials in the AVC.
• By providing collaborative environments to facilitate interactions between educators to produce educational material
• By providing collaborative environments to facilitate interactions between researchers to develop visualization, analysis, and parameterization codes.

Policy

The scope of the AVC is atmospheric education and research, with particular emphasis in relationship to ARM data. The collection seeks resources that bring the atmospheric science into the classroom or other learning site, as well as capabilities to improve accessibility and usability of ARM data by researchers. The collection shall favor educational materials that are well-documented, easy to use, bug-free, motivational for learners, pedagogically effective, scientifically accurate, and which foster mastery of significant understandings or skills. The collection shall favor research materials that are well-documented, easy to use, bug-free, useful for data quality analysis, effective for real-time campaign decision making, and improve research capabilities for quickly and visually interpreting ARM data.

The types of materials to be collected include:

• Research and education materials, and sources of content:
  • Tutorials and learning resources
  • Lesson plans and Learning activities
  • Interactive tutorials on atmospheric concepts (for students)
  • Interactive mini-tutorials about a specific aspect of pedagogy (for faculty)
• Tools:
  • Codes to visualize and analyze ARM data
  • Calculators and converters
  • Conceptual models and simulations
  • Tools for creating learning materials
  • Tools for developing visualization and analysis codes.
• Geographic coverage:
  • Southern Great Plains
  • North Slope of Alaska
  • Tropical West Pacific

The AVC is aligned with the DLESE Collections Scope and Policy Statement (http://www.dlese.org/documents/policy/CollectionsScope_final.html) as well as the DLESE Collections Accession and Deaccessioning Policy (http://www.dlese.org/documents/policy/collections_accession.html).olicy/collections_accession.html). This means, the AVC is using DLESE's current metadata format and provides all required metadata.

Contacts

Please direct questions about the AVC to klaus@anl.gov. Inquiries will be answered as soon as possible.

Terms of use

For the AVC, terms of use issues have two components, a resource's terms of use and metadata terms of use. All resources within the collection are copyright 2003 Atmospheric Visualization Collection (AVC) with permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts in scientific and educational works as long as the source is acknowledged. In terms of the AVC metadata records, all metadata within the collection are copyright © 2003 Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) but metadata may be used as long as it is consistent with the DLESE Intellectual Property Policy (http://www.dlese.org/documents/policy/DLESE_IP_approved.html). This allows for the redistribution of metadata records. Individual metadata records are available for harvest from AVC, NSDL, or DLESE.

Quality Assurance of the Collection

The research resources made accessible via this collection are of a very high quality because they are regularly used and reviewed by ARM scientists. The educational resources made accessible via the collection are of a very high quality because they are reviewed by an educational panel and class tested. The metadata records are generated by AVC staff and are reviewed for meeting minimum DLESE metadata requirements, spelling and data integrity. If users of the collection find errors or have suggestions for improvement for either the resources in the collection or for the metadata of the collection, AVC will consider the suggestions and make changes as appropriate.

Note: The materials being developed in the collaborative environments are not covered by these quality assurance conditions. These environments are a service for those wishing to collaborate on AVC development, thus material within these environments may be at various stages of development.

Persistence plan

This collection is expected to continue growing and to exist indefinitely. If for some reason this collection cannot be maintained by the AVC, the AVC will make arrangements with the NSDL and DLESE in order to continue to make this collection accessible.

Last updated: 2005-06-27
Maintained by: Katy Ginger (support@dlese.org), DLESE Metadata

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