The Scientific Knowledge and Education Network (SKEN) is an NSF-funded project at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology to build dynamic collaborative communities centered around primary scientific references. The underlying goals of SKEN are to expand traditional, content-based scientific information into a community-based information exchange and to provide an innovative mechanism for blending science knowledge with opportunities for formal and informal science education. This transforms primary scientific references into "living" publications that include the most current information on their topics and allow continuous annotations of the content through community input from both researchers and members of the public.
SKEN is moving primary scientific resources from restricted content distribution points (bricks and mortar libraries) to ubiquitous availability over the Internet. It is also decreasing the time required to update these scientific resources, and improving access, search, and archival capabilities.
SKEN's first implementation will use the Birds of North America, which provides detailed scientific information (18 volumes, 18,000 pages in total) for each of the 716 species of birds nesting in the USA and Canada. The print version of BNA was completed in 2002, a joint 10 year project of the American Ornithologists' Union, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Academy of Natural Sciences.
Steve Kelling is the Director of Information Science for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (CLO). Steve first came to the Lab in 1997 from the Applied and Engineering Physics program at Cornell University to work on the creation of BirdSource, a joint program with Audubon to develop Internet applications that engage bird-watchers in citizen science projects focused on birds.
Steve's primary interests and responsibilities revolve around four broad topics: the development of Internet data gathering tools for observational-based monitoring projects, the use of novel digital library strategies to create global communities of interested users centered around primary scientific references, the organization of the rich data resources of the bird-monitoring community and integrating these resources within existing bioinformatic infrastructures, and using unique computer science strategies to analyze the distribution and abundance of wild bird populations.
