DURHAM -- A collaboration between a Durham-based nonprofit and N.C. Central University is slated to receive nearly $3 million from the federal government to help build a Web-based math and science library.

The Shodor Education Foundation, which promotes technological methods of teaching math and science, has been named a "pathway" into the National Science Digital Library, designed as a reliable online source of facts and tools for teachers and researchers.

Shodor, which is partnering with NCCU on the project, will receive $2.8 million over four years from the National Science Foundation, which runs the library. During the first year of the grant, about $80,000 will go to NCCU, according to Shodor Executive Director Robert Panoff.

The digital library already links to some of Shodor's teaching tools, which include interactive models showing how functions translate onto graphs and how math can be used to predict changes in ecosystems. But whereas Shodor was just a link from the library before, now it and its university partners will be responsible for assembling information and verifying its accuracy.

Trustworthiness is what separates the digital library from the World Wide Web as a whole, Panoff said.

Typing a basic science fact like "mass of the earth" into a search engine like Google yields several different answers with no guidelines to point out which is most reliable.

"There's no way to know," he said.

In contrast, Panoff said, those searching the digital library can be confident that the answers they find have been checked by real scientists.

The NSF's digital library was launched in 2002 and contains contributions from more than 150 sites.

NCCU Provost Lucy Reuben said working with Shodor on the project would help the university as it plans to add a new degree program in computational science, a field that focuses on the use of computers to solve complex scientific problems. The proposed bachelor's degree would be the UNC system's first in the field.

Shodor's work on the digital library will focus heavily on computation science and will rely partly on the help of NCCU faculty, making it a natural fit with the planned degree program, Panoff said.

"This grant will assist us in ensuring that NCCU grads are leading contenders in the 21st-century economy," Reuben said.

c. Durham Herald Company, Inc.