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Ecology is the study of relationships of organisms to each other and to their environment. Using this metaphor as a guide, SHANTI created the Mandala Project, which can be understood as having essentially three parts: Mandala's digital tools are the "environment", the media content created by scholars using these digital tools are the "organisms" that live within this environment, and the Knowledge Maps application is the way that everything interacts with everything else. In other words, Mandala comprises a suite of digital tools that are used for storing, organizing, and publishing collections of scholarly media
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media which then can be interrelated and catalogued using Knowledge Maps.
Mandala allows scholars to create this sophisticated content without needing special grants or much programming assistance. Scholars of all skill-levels can easily create rich collections, for using Mandala is simple. First, add content using a media specific site, such as Mediabase, SHIVA, or Shared ShelfText, all of which can be accessed with Netbadge. Next, catalogue and connect content together with Knowledge Map terms, which can be thought of as a "semantic glue. " Finally, explore your collections in portals that show all of your content, as well as the content of others, and focus your exploration by searching for the Knowledge Map terms that interest you.
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