  This paper describes the digital library of historical resources, a research
project which involves building a testbed for the purpose of developing and
testing new collaborative digital library functionality and presents an initial
analysis of the digital library's public use on the web. The digital library is
modeled to focus on serving secondary students information needs in conducting
history projects. As such, in the implementation of the digital library, the
use of online resources would be an integral part of history project based
learning activities. Students should be enabled to access digital resources,
create and publish their own documents in the digital library and share them
with others. As a testbed system, the collaborative digital library known as
CoreDev has demonstrated its capabilities in serving an educational community
as has been reflected by the positive feedback on the functional requirements
from 44 users. Over 75% of the respondents in the user survey considered
themselves capable of using the digital library easily. The beta tester
demographics (n = 105) indicate that the digital library is reaching its target
communities.
