Born in 1947 of General Leslie R. Grove's mandate to tell the American people about the formerly secret Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, or OSTI, rapidly became home to one of the world's most comprehensive collections of energy-related information.
Resources
"A Moment in Time", by Melvin S. Day, describes the early days at OSTI. [exit federal site]
"The Oak Ridge Technical Information
Center – A Trailblazer in Federal Documentation"
by William McGill Vaden
Video: Sharing Scientific Knowledge, Then and Now
(12:00 minutes)
Long before the Internet came along, OSTI advanced science by making research information widely available. OSTI annually responded to upwards of 50,000 requests for information and, during the 1977 “energy crisis,” fielded more than 150,000 requests. Located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, OSTI operated one of the few Federal printing plants in the United States, and in 1948 began an almost 30-year production of the world-famous Nuclear Science Abstracts, which greatly expanded access to nuclear science information. OSTI shouldered a lead role in providing materials to the Atoms for Peace Geneva Conferences, envisioned by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to pool nuclear information for sharing with peaceful nations. OSTI was instrumental in establishing the International Nuclear Information System (INIS), which promotes nuclear information exchange between 110 countries.
Today, OSTI is nationally recognized for contributions to the sharing and exchange of science information, specifically through a suite of web tools and services designed to deliver science information to desktops everywhere. OSTI is one of the few Federal facilities in the United States with a “.gov” street address, 1 Science.gov Way, named for one of its projects of national import – Science.gov. Looking to the future, OSTI is focusing on development of a gateway to science worldwide, descriptively called Science.world.
Whether by print or by pixel, OSTI has long been committed to ensuring appropriate and ready access to government research. OSTI is dedicated to the principle that, to advance science, research must be shared. OSTI works to accelerate discovery by speeding access to knowledge.
Statutory Authority: The Atomic Energy Acts of 1946 and 1954, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the Department of Energy Act of 1977, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005, all call for the dissemination of scientific and technical information (STI) to the public, especially information resulting from DOE and predecessor agency research and development R&D. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 states: "The Secretary, through the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, shall maintain within the Department publicly available collections of scientific and technical information resulting from research, development, demonstration, and commercial applications activities supported by the Department." Since 1947, the various incarnations of OSTI have helped meet requirements for information dissemination on behalf of the Department and predecessor agencies, the Energy Research & Development Administration (ERDA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
Pre-Internet Chronology: The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which was created by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 [1.74-MB PDF], began the Technical Information Program in 1947. At first, the Technical Information Division (TID) was managed locally by the predecessor of Oak Ridge Operations. In 1948 the reporting relationship was changed, and the function, though still physically located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, began reporting directly to Washington, DC, as it does today.
The advantages of having a centralized information dissemination function, as opposed to separate functions at the labs, were recognized from the beginning. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the programmatic mission of TID was to "plan, develop, maintain, and administer all services and facilities required to accomplish the dissemination of scientific and technical information for the encouragement of scientific progress and to promote the ultimate sharing on a reciprocal basis of information concerning the practical industrial application of atomic energy, as provided for in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946." This called for three basic STI functions to be established that continue today: collection, preservation, and dissemination, with separate operations for classified information.
In the beginning, announcement journals of bibliographic information and abstracts were the state-of-the-art for disseminating information about declassified and unclassified reports. An abstracting service and a printing plant were established. An announcement journal Nuclear Science Abstracts (NSA), begun in 1948, soon became world famous. NSA broadened the type of literature announced (adding journal articles, books, international literature, etc.– not just material produced by AEC) so that it became comprehensive in its coverage of nuclear science.
In addition to the bibliographic information and abstracts in the announcement journal format, OSTI used the technology of that day to deliver full text of documents. In 1952, TID initiated document miniaturization (microcard/microfiche), a program designed to facilitate rapid and inexpensive dissemination of the full text of reports to Government Printing Office (GPO) depository libraries.
Information was a central component of the "Atoms-for-Peace" Program called for under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. On the domestic side, this effort ensured accessibility of nuclear science information to U.S. industry. On the international side, this effort involved negotiating bilateral agreements for cooperation between the United States and other nations which included the exchange of information and drafting of an organizational structure that would establish the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In the mid-1960s, OSTI (then the Division of Technical Information Extension) began using computers to store and exchange information to enable rapid and dependable searching of bibliographic information.
OSTI personnel were instrumental in the creation of the International Nuclear Information System (INIS) in 1969 by the IAEA. Today INIS promotes information exchange among 110 member states and 19 international organizations. In mid-1976, NSA was discontinued after 30 years and IAEA/INIS shouldered primary responsibility for publishing a printed nuclear announcement journal product known as Atomindex.
In the 1970s, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 abolished the AEC and established the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). The Department of Energy Act of 1977 abolished ERDA and established the Department of Energy (DOE). These acts broadened OSTI's (now TIC) role in the collection, preservation, and dissemination of non-nuclear related energy information. Building on the international cooperative relationships already in place, exchanges were expanded into non-nuclear areas and began involving the newly formed International Energy Agency (IEA). In 1974, OSTI initiated the building of the Energy Science and Technology Database (EDB) encompassing the full scope of energy, all literature types, and with worldwide coverage. Microfiche was still the norm for full-text distribution and archiving. Along with GPO, OSTI was the only other public outlet for DOE information dissemination.
During the 1980s, OSTI was instrumental in establishing the international Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE), an implementing agreement under the IEA. OSTI has served as the Operating Agent for this agreement since its inception, which now has 16 member countries. ETDE was established for the purpose of sharing non-nuclear energy information.
The 1980s also saw the establishment of the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) as an additional public outlet for all Federal report information, including that provided by OSTI, as required by the American Technology Pre-eminence Act. Throughout its history, OSTI has maintained responsibility in the policy areas of STI management, ensuring that the Department has strong, centralized leadership in a decentralized information environment. However, OSTI has been de-emphasizing command and control. In 1997, OSTI coordinated the Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Strategic Plan, which promotes more mutually beneficial collaboration with STIP partners at the labs and Operations Offices.
Internet Age: Although OSTI's name and chain of command have shifted several times, its core mission to collect, preserve, and disseminate scientific and technical information continues. With forward-thinking and agile leadership, OSTI made significant strides into the Information Age: defining new electronic exchange formats; creating collections of digitized scientific and technical information; serving researchers directly; and developing an energy science and technology virtual library.
In 1994, OSTI created the first DOE home page, and in 1996 entered the Internet era full force with digitization of report literature. In 1997 the microfiche process and the printing plant at the facility were ended. With the evolution of the web, it has become possible for OSTI to serve the DOE researcher community directly, in addition to serving information intermediaries.
In 1997, OSTI coordinated the Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Strategic Plan, which promotes more mutually beneficial collaboration with STIP partners at the labs and Operations Offices.
In 1997, Energy Files: Virtual Library of Energy Science and Technology was unveiled as the first web-based virtual library providing easy access to over 500 widely diverse collections of both DOE and worldwide energy-related STI. This award-winning system assimilated databases and websites into an energy information environment available to researchers and the general public from a single source.
The DOE Information Bridge was the first system to provide searchable full-text and bibliographic records of DOE-sponsored research report literature. Originally made available to DOE and DOE contractors, Information Bridge was introduced to the public in April 1998. Also in 1997, R&D Project Summaries was introduced as the first free web-accessible product to provide access to R&D projects ongoing within DOE.
In August 2000, OSTI added two new products to its vast collection. The GrayLIT Network provides a comprehensive portal to over 340,000 full-text technical reports from various Federal agencies. Federal Research and Development Project Summaries provides full-text Federal R&D information from over half-a-million project summaries. With a single query, users may search individual databases residing at different agencies. Both products are early successes stemming from the Workshop Report on a Future Information Infrastructure for the Physical Sciences.
In 2001, Energy Citations Database was launched, providing bibliographic citations for DOE energy and energy-related research from 1948 to the present.
In December 2002 the interagency Science.gov was launched. This web portal, the Federal government's FirstGov for science, is hosted at OSTI. Science.gov provided for the first time single query search across the governments vast stores on scientific and technical information.
In July 2003, the PrePRINT Network was expanded and renamed E-print Network, which provides single query searching of e-print manuscripts, scholarly papers, and other scientific documents residing on scientific websites, as well as a deep web search across major e-print databases.
In May 2004 science.gov 2.0 was launched, introducing relevancy ranked searching to government science web information. In addition, OSTI opened government databases to commercial search engines, greatly expanding public access to DOE research results.
In May 2005, OSTI launched Science Conferences Proceedings, a portal for searching conference papers and proceedings in various fields of science and technology from conferences of interest to DOE.
In June 2006, OSTI introduced the concept of an international science gateway, which would draw on the success of Science.gov and the Energy Technology Data Exchange to expand distributed searching of science resources, building a one-stop "shopping source" for worldwide science information.
In April 2007, OSTI introduced scalability in federated government search through the development of the initial version of the Science Accelerator. The Science Accelerator demonstrates the capabilities that will eventually yield the technology to search at least 1,000 scientific databases in parallel.
In June 2007, DOE and the British Library, along with eight other participating countries, opened a searchable online global gateway to science information from 15 national portals. The gateway, WorldWideScience.org, introduced federated searching across science sources on a global scale. WorldWideScience.org gives citizens, researchers and anyone interested in science the capability to search science portals not easily accessible through popular search technology such as that deployed by popular search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. WorldWideScience.org was developed and is maintained by OSTI.
On September 18, 2007, OSTI introduced a searchable collection of more than 20,000 patent records resulting from U.S. Department of Energy and predecessor-agency funding. The DOepatent collection represents a growing compilation of patents resulting from research supported by DOE, and demonstrates the Department's considerable contribution to scientific progress from the 1940s to the present.
OSTI is well-positioned to meet customer needs by defining the next generation of information access and dissemination.
