Information technologies and digital resources for teaching and learning have enabled new modes of learning in science, mathematics, engineering and technology education (SMETE). Recent initiatives in SMET educational reform have coupled the advances in technology with new research in the learning sciences to develop multidisciplinary project/discovery-based approaches to teaching. Such pedagogical approaches rely on teamwork and peer-learning, scaffolded learning and social constructs, and promote life-long learning. This shift of learning mode poses difficulties for established educational norms. The role of the teacher changes from oracle to mentor; resources central to a structured curriculum are shifted to those directly applicable to the project or experiment at hand. The internet and the digital libraries it affords are positioned to become a major learning resource in the future.

To merit promotion from secondary resource to educational workhorse, the digital library must be transformed from a static information repository to a dynamic learning space. The first step in this transformation is replacing the current collection-centric view of the digital library with a learner-centric model. Only by recasting the goals of information retrieval to embrace the context of information search toward learning goals can we realize our vision of a digital learning space.

The second transforming step is realizing that a library (digital or physical) is really a community organized around learning. After all, a physical library is not only stacks and a catalog, it is also a space where people work and interact. A SMETE digital learning space must be one where members of a community of learners in science, mathematics, engineering and technology education interact with one another to develop, locate, use and recommend to each other resources to enhance teaching and learning. To serve this community and promote teamwork and peer learning, its collections must be dynamic and include information developed in the context of project work by learners. Services provided must include the means for learners to store both work-in-progress for incubating knowledge and public work spaces to share and review more mature knowledge with others. Storage is futile without access, so services must also include effective means for connecting learners with both the ongoing and completed contributions of the community.

Teachers apply knowledge of students’ preparation, course goals, overall conceptual structure toward selecting appropriate learning materials. We are particularly interested in the role that digital libraries can play in supporting both teachers and learners with project-based learning approaches to teaching, where we define project-based learning in a generic sense across disciplines (e.g., design projects in engineering, inquiry-based experiments in science or multidisciplinary case studies). When learners are immersed in a project, they take on a major role in as lesson planners themselves. The instructor can still be an intermediary between learning materials and the learner; but the goal of lifelong learning is to shift this burden to the learner. A second goal is to support the selection of appropriate learning materials, primarily by approximating a learner’s state of knowledge (the ‘here’) and learning goals (the ‘there’) within the metathesaurus and identifying resources on the path from here to there.