EnergyPortal: The Distributed Search Tool
of the EnergyFiles Virtual Library of Energy Science and Technology

The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) provides government, industry, academia, and the public access to scientific and technical information resulting from and supporting the nation's multibillion dollar investment in energy research and development. Over the past two years, the framework and content for the Web-based EnergyFiles Virtual Library of Energy Science and Technology  has been developed and implemented at OSTI. While it provides the umbrella for OSTI's suite of scientific and technical information products, this extensive site also assimilates over 450 collections of energy information and associated resources of which over 100 are directly sponsored by the Department of Energy. In addition to other forms of recognition, EnergyFiles has gained national acclaim by receiving a 1999 Hammer Award from Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR).

This year EnergyFiles conquered a major obstacle confronting multi-source virtual libraries through the innovative application of emerging technologies. EnergyPortal, an innovative distributed search mechanism, was developed to increase EnergyFiles' site efficiency and ease of knowledge discovery and was introduced to DOE and the public on April 21, 1999. Instead of accessing and searching each site individually, EnergyPortal enables users to search across 9 databases (soon to be 25) and over 400 Web sites contained in EnergyFiles using a single query. The sites are maintained by various agencies, are geographically dispersed, and require no standardization in terms of format, software or metadata.

The EnergyPortal feature represents a breakthrough in information retrieval. It is no longer a matter of "clicking" on individual links to sift through available information in pursuit of that which is relevant. Words or phrases may be entered in a single query box and the query is distributed in parallel to the user-selected multiple databases and Web sites residing at diverse locations. The search engine will search full-text when available, including the over 2.5 million pages of text on the DOE Information Bridge and other resources. When the individual database supports it, the searched word or phrase is highlighted for easy access.

This distributed search capability demonstrates an essential next step in information technology - the integration of parallel searching and retrieving of information from disparate and geographically dispersed databases and Web sites.

To our knowledge, the EnergyPortal functionality provides the only distributed search in use that transcends full-text of other government agencies' information sources. Since it includes only unlimited, unclassified energy-related information, users in government, industry, academia and the public benefit from the addition of this capability. Time is saved through more efficient and effective information retrieval since the information is accessible on the Internet in an organized, searchable format. Not only are DOE databases and collections searchable, but databases of other agencies such as the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), NASA and EPA are also available for distributed, single-query searching.

Usage statistics, although preliminary, provide quantitative data to support the increased benefits and popularity of EnergyPortal and the EnergyFiles Virtual Library in general. In the past year, there have been 436,528 hits on EnergyFiles by 16,000 unique hosts for an average of 36,377 hits per month. With the inception of EnergyPortal, hits logged solely on these new Web pages totaled 14,400 for the month of May, an increase of 39%. Of interest to all sectors, most usage is spread among the .gov, .com and .edu domains.

Other agencies may use this technology as a model in their quest to build and manage diverse, heterogeneous virtual libraries or Web sites. It has long been understood that distributed search technology could provide a giant leap forward in information access and retrieval. Obstacles are numerous in making this concept a reality due to the lack of standardization among platforms, formats, metadata and other attributes. OSTI, in partnership with Innovative Web Applications, was able to remove these obstacles by using a common user interface for searching and retrieving information across heterogeneous data sets including OpenText, WAIS, Fulcrum and Verity information collections. User search requests are translated into the syntax that is understood by the search engine of the web database being searched.