Facilitating Wiki/Repository Communication with Metadata

The National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Materials Digital Library Pathway (MatDL) has implemented an information infrastructure to disseminate government funded research results and to provide content as well as services to support the integration of research and education in materials. This paper describes how we are enabling two-way communication between a digital repository and open-source collaborative tools, such as wikis, to support users in materials research and education in the creation and re-use of compelling learning resources. A search results plug-in for MediaWiki has been developed to display relevant search results from the Fedora-based MatDL repository in the Soft Matter Wiki established and developed by MatDL and its partners. Wiki-to-repository information transfer has also been facilitated by mapping the metadata associated with resources originating in the wiki onto Dublin Core (DC) metadata elements and making the metadata and resources available in the repository.