Essential Steps
Developing a Planning and Implementation Model
for Bringing USEIN into Operation
With a goal of establishing and operating a comprehensive national information partnership in education to serve America's educators, parents, policy makers, and the public, the National Library of Education in conjunction with its parent organization, the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the U.S. Department of Education has a major task to accomplish in a relatively brief time. This task is complicated by the rapid change of technology that is occurring within society at large. There are many benefits to those rapid changes in technology, but using them to best advantage for the largest group of constituents requires careful planning and evaluation.
The focus of this paper is to synthesize the findings of the other four papers (Carr, D'Amicantonio, Ely and Libutti, 1997) related to the United States Education Information Network (USEIN), and to present practical guidance on implementation of the network. To that end, a brief review of the purpose of the network is appropriate. USEIN is intended to be a national network of education information providers that includes libraries, archives, educational institutions and schools, and other information providers such as corporations, associations, organizations, and agencies. It is intended to be a network of active partners collaborating to provide education information in all formats, to all customers, in all education-related subjects. Given this mandate, it is clear that a new vision of information provision is needed. At the same time, existing resources need to be used to the best and fullest advantage. Proposed in the following sections are mechanisms for achieving those goals.
Essential Steps