Digital Mathematics Library

A one-year (2002-2003) planning project coordinated by Cornell University Library and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) toward the establishment of a comprehensive, international, distributed collection of digital information and published knowledge in mathematics.

NSF Award Number:
DUE-0206640

Principal Investigator:
Sarah E. Thomas, University Librarian, Cornell University

Co-Principal Investigators:
R. Keith Dennis, Professor of Mathematics, Cornell University
Jean Poland, Associate University Librarian for Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences, Cornell University

Project vision

In light of mathematicians' reliance on their discipline's rich published heritage and the key role of mathematics in enabling other scientific disciplines, the Digital Mathematics Library strives to make the entirety of past mathematics scholarship available online, at reasonable cost, in the form of an authoritative and enduring digital collection, developed and curated by a network of institutions.

Project status

The initial DML planning group completed its work with the close of the May 2003 meeting in Göttingen and disbanded. The Committee on Electronic Information and Communication (CEIC) of the International Mathematics Union (IMU) has assumed coordination of the next phase of the project. This global effort is named World Digital Mathematics Library (WDML), to differentiate it from national and regional DML initiatives. In July 2003 a WDML Steering Committee was formed, consisting of:

Alf van der Poorten, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia (Chair)
Pierre Bérard, University of Grenoble, France
Thierry Bouche, University of Grenoble, France
Gertraud Griepke, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany
Rolf Jeltsch, Seminar for Applied Mathematics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
David Mumford, Department of Mathematics, Brown University, Providence, RI
Jean Poland, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York
Bernd Wegner, Zentralblatt für Mathematik and Department of Mathematics, Technical University Berlin, Germany

The NSF has extended the grant period for the original DML planning project to October 31, 2004. The extension will facilitate the project’s transition to IMU leadership and support additional planning for continued interaction among digitization projects. The no-cost extension also allows Cornell University Library to apply remaining grant funds toward digitizing the backrun of an important journal title as a proof-of-concept for DML standards. A final report will be submitted to the NSF at the close of the grant period and subsequently made public.

Key project documents

Cornell University Library. (2001) Digital Mathematics Library. Proposal to the National Science Foundation (HTML) (MS Word).
Ewing, John (2002, March). Twenty centuries of mathematics: Digitizing and disseminating the past mathematical literature. Version 12.3. http://www.ams.org/ewing/Twenty_centuries.pdf.
A Digital Mathematics Library: Expression of Interest to the European Union submitted by the European Mathematical Society (PDF).
DML Final Report, October 2004.

Key dates and deadlines

End of NSF grant period	extended to October 31, 2004
Final Report to NSF	October 31, 2004
Proposal submissions	anytime

Project organization 2002-2003

Meetings

2004

June 25 to 27, 2004, Stockholm, Sweden: "New Developments in Electronic Publishing of Mathematics - a workshop integrating mathematicians, libraries, editors and publishers"
Official satellite conference to the Fourth European Congress Of Mathematics, KTH Stockholm, in combination with the 5th EMANI workshop and the 3rd WDML workshop
- Announcement and Call for Papers

2003

May 21-22, 2003, Göttingen, Germany: Second DML Planning Meeting
State and University Library Göttingen
March 19-20, 2003, Grenoble, France: DML Steering Committee Meeting
January 15, 2003 Baltimore, Maryland: Informal Meeting on DML Initiative, Joint Mathematics Meeting
- List of participants

2002

July 29-30, 2002 Washington, DC: First DML Planning Meeting
National Science Foundation headquarters
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230

related documents
January 7, 2002 San Diego, California: Informal Meeting on Mathematics Digitization, Joint Mathematics Meetings
- Presentation summaries, agenda, and participants