How Open Educational Standards Underlie a Blackboard Building Block for Federated Repository Search and Access to the Blackboard Content System

There is a wealth of content stored in repositories which would benefit educators and learners alike. Unfortunately this content is rarely easily discoverable, let alone useable in a CMS or other instructive or constructive environment. Additionally in the case of Blackboard content added to courses or organizations effectively 'disappears' once the course is no longer used unless the contributor can remember the exact course the content was used in or the filename of the content in question. The Federated Repository Search Tool intends to solve many issues with the discovery and (re)use of content for users of the Blackboard CMS. It will do so by enabling users with a tool, which allows the searching of not only their course-contributed content, but also external repositories. Discovered content may be reused, added as \"new\" content in courses and organizations, linked to from other web sites, or if permitted by the repository, downloaded and used in research papers and other documents.