Design of a digital mathematical library for science, technology and education

The concept of a digital library is of proven worth because of its ability to provide dramatic capabilities that are impossible with traditional print media. We are interested in providing such capabilities for scientific, technical and educational users of mathematical reference data. Our attention is focused on the highly specialized field of mathematics that is concerned with the properties, application and computation of the elementary and higher mathematical functions. Calling upon domain experts worldwide for assistance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is conducting an ambitious project to construct, ab initio, a comprehensive and authoritative Web resource on this subject. The need to make effective use of the latest developments in digital library research is a major focus, as is the development of content. We discuss our approach to such difficulties as the representation, display and manipulation of symbolic expressions, numerical data and graphical visualizations, and we describe a prototype Web site that has been constructed to test, evaluate and advance the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions project.