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, including the digital tools it offers, is the "environment", the media contents created by scholars using these digital tools are the "organisms" that live within this environment, and the Knowledge Maps application is the glue that allows everything to interact 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, media which then can be interrelated and cataloged 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 that include many types of media, such as videos, charts, essays, network graphs, and much more. Using Mandala is simple. First, create a collection and add content to it using a digital tool, such as Mediabase, SHIVA, or Text, all of which can be accessed with Netbadge. Next, catalog and connect content together with Knowledge Map terms. 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.