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About

Background
The goal of this National Digital Science Library (NSDL) project, with support from the National Science Foundation, is to implement a sustainable digital collection of international environmental and ecosystem policy documents that:

Materials for this collection have been provided by the Marine Mammal Commission based on their comprehensive five-volume Marine Mammal Commission Compendium of Selected Treaties, International Agreements, and Other Relevant Documents on Marine Resources, Wildlife, and the Environment that had been compiled between 1991 and 2000 with broad involvement from national and international government agencies; non-governmental organizations; universities; industry and the public.

Architecture of this digital library harnesses the granularity and complexity of international documents with automated technology based on the patented Digital Integration System (DigIn®) from EvREsearch LTD / TierIT LTD. The template for this digital library is the Antarctic Treaty Searchable Database that was the first and remains the most comprehensive source of integrated policy information from the Antarctic Treaty System.  For additional background, please see: Berkman, P.A., Morgan, G.J., Moore, R. and Hamidzadeh. B. 2006. Automated Granularity to Integrate Digital Records: The "Antarctic Treaty Searchable Database" Case Study. International Council of Science, Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) Data Science Journal 5: 84-99.

Marine Mammal Commission Compendia
Preface materials describe the rationale, scope, and implementation for the Marine Mammal Commission Compendium of Selected Treaties, International Agreements, and Other Relevant Documents on Marine Resources, Wildlife, and the Environment that span the period from 1818 to 1998. Volumes 1-3 (pages 1-3547) were published in 1994. The First Update (pages 1-1017) was published in 1997 and the Second Update (pages 1-1365) was published in 2000. These compendia from the Marine Mammal Commission (Bethesda, Maryland) were published with partial support from the:

Digital Integration System (DigIn®)
DigIn® is based on patented technologies from EvREsearch LTD / TierIT LTD, which this project used to implement the digital library that was derived from the Marine Mammal Commission compendia. These technologies provide the capacity to automatically identify the 'building blocks' of an information resource and generate discrete information granules (e.g., articles, annexes or appendices of policy documents) that can be integrated objectively for any user-defined query (see the Quick Integration Guide page). Consequently - rather than lists of information that hide relationships among information resources - DigIn® allows users to dynamically generate expandable-collapsible hierarchies that comprehensively reveal relationships among the 8458 granules within and between the 650 parent policy documents in this digital library (see the Digital Library Contents page).

National Science Digital Library (NSDL)
The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) was created by the National Science Foundation to provide organized access to high quality resources and tools that support innovations in teaching and learning at all levels of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Please visit the NSDL website or view the 2005 NSDL Annual Report for additional information.

Acknowledgements
This NSDL project required the hard work, advice and creative contributions of many people. Support for this project was generously provide by the National Science Foundation as part of the National Science Digital Library program (NSF/DUE No. 0329044). This project was administrated through The New Media Studio by Dr. Bruce Caron, who is the Executive Director. Ms. Suzanne Montgomery, Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the Marine Mammal Commission, was instrumental in the development of this project and provided access to digital versions of the Marine Mammal Commission compendia documents. Mr. George James Morgan III, founder of Native Voices International and President of EvREsearch LTD, served as the software engineer for this project. As the inventor of the DigIn® technologies, Mr. Morgan's contributions were key to the design and implementation of this digital library. Ms. Julie Ekstrom, a graduate research assistant from the University of California Santa Barbara, applied the DigIn® interfaces to generate the policy-document granules that underlie the integration functionality of this digital library. Mr. Dan Spiteri of Benefit Software in Santa Barbara graciously donated his time to assist Ms. Ekstrom with creating this website. This project benefited from the excellent guidance and oversight from its advisory board, which includes Dr. Caron, Ms. Montgomery and Mr. Morgan along with: Dr. Reagan Moore (Associate Director, San Diego Supercomputer Center), Dr. Howard Burrows (former Chair, NSDL Policy Committee) and Dr. Oran R. Young (Professor, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California Santa Barbara). We thank Mr. Marty Katon for generously creating his marine mammal artwork ("Out of the Blue") for the Home page of this digital library. This project was proposed and managed by Dr. Paul Arthur Berkman, who is a Research Professor at the Bren School as well as Chief Executive Officer of EvREsearch LTD.

 

THIS DIGITAL LIBRARY IS DESIGNED TO ENHANCE KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY FROM INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECOSYSTEM POLICY DOCUMENTS.  THERE IS NO WARRANTY, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE FURNISHED DATA AND RESULTING INTEGRATION DISPLAYS.  FOR AUTHENTIC VERSIONS OF THE POLICY DOCUMENTS, PLEASE REFER TO THE DEPOSITORY GOVERNMENTS OR THE UNITED NATIONS.