Walter L. Warnick, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Scientific and Technical Information
Office of Science
U. S. Department of Energy
October 1998
The contemplated National Library of Energy Science and Technology will collect, organize, preserve, and disseminate:
It will be a digital library which will make distributed information collections accessible to researchers and the public.
Secretary Richardson recently stated that, "I want the American people to know the Department is working for them." To this end, DOE should commit to making information available electronically via the World Wide Web, thereby enhancing its visibility and use, and making users aware that DOE is a major R&D Agency. The establishment of the National Library of Energy Science and Technology is a key initiative that the Department can pursue to achieve the Secretary's vision.
The Foundation
Scientific and technical information would be the responsibility of what is now the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) and its Laboratory and Operations Office collaborators. Anchored by statutes, OSTI has for more than 50 years provided leadership for the DOE community in making scientific and technical information available worldwide. Recent collaborative efforts involving all of the DOE facilities have focused on capitalizing on Information Age technology.
Two profound consequences are being realized. First, the content of the information readily available for dissemination is greatly expanded; bibliographic information is yielding to full text. Second, the customers served are greatly expanded from intermediaries such as librarians to researchers and the public. These two changes are coming at little or no incremental cost.
Both R&D report literature and journal literature are being revolutionized. DOE report literature is captured in full text by the DOE Information Bridge, which has over 2 million pages in 30,000 reports, all searchable and available to the public. It won a 1998 commendation from a GPO advisory committee, the only non-GPO system to be so honored. The Information Bridge also won a 1998 DOE IM Council award for Technical Excellence. Together, these two awards show that DOE is a leader among Agencies in Web applications, and OSTI is a leader within DOE. Confirming these views, the Information Bridge was featured in the inaugural issue of Vice President Al Gore's Access America On-line Magazine. As this is being written, a DOE lab is voluntarily adding all its legacy files to the Information Bridge, a precedent, which if followed across the Agency, would make the Information Bridge a comprehensive collection of DOE reports back to World War II.
A project to bring journal articles to the desktop full text and searchable is now underway. Called PubScience, it is modeled after PubMed, a hugely successful system by which the National Library of Medicine enables over 10 million searches per year. Like PubMed, PubScience is built upon a huge bibliographic database. DOE already has such a database which focuses on all the disciplines of concern to DOE–mainly the physical sciences; it has been maintained and developed by OSTI for 50 years.
Both the Information Bridge and PubScience are cheaper than the paper-based systems they replace, although transition costs are significant. These systems, when coupled with lesser collections, like patents, will provide a comprehensive collection of scientific and technical information in disciplines of concern to DOE.
Such a collection of information would be the cornerstone of the NLEST. One could hardly imagine a National Library without such a collection, and one could hardly imagine such a collection being compiled in these disciplines without the tools of the Information Age. But the NLEST would need to be more. It would need information from DOE programs and laboratories, educational information, energy data from EIA, and some other library services, which would require incremental funding. It would fill a pressing need. The current situation wherein disparate DOE organizations host islands of information, without having the whole searchable or retrievable by topic, is unlikely to satisfy customer needs nor achieve the full benefits of openness.
The National Library of Energy Science and Technology would become the fourth National Library after NIH's National Library of Medicine, USDA's National Agricultural Library, and the newly created National Library of Education, all of which are well funded by Congress. The National Library of Medicine is receiving large budget increases.
Implementation Strategy
One of the great strengths of digital technology is that it allows information to be distributed both from and to servers in dispersed locations. There are two important consequences. First, digital technologies allow users of DOE information to come from anywhere to a single point–the NLEST–to find information via subject searches anywhere across the entire DOE complex. This would be a tremendous advance over the current situation where a prospective user of DOE information must first assimilate the DOE organization chart to find it.
The second consequence of distributed information is that the NLEST could well consist of a collaborative confederation of organizations from across DOE. No organization need be asked to surrender any autonomy, nor assume any unfunded mandate. Modeled after the arrangements of the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program, it should purposefully avoid command and control. It should succeed only to the extent that it advances the missions of the participating organizations. A central coordinator would be needed, but would serve as a facilitator for collaboration, not as an information czar. Thus, to create the NLEST, voluntary collaboration should be sought across the Agency; a measure of mutual trust is a prerequisite.
Before the NLEST is created, sensitivities on the Hill need to be addressed. One such sensitivity is use of the term "National." Lessons learned from experiences with the Spallation Neutron Source, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory should be reviewed. DOE needs the term "National" to assume its rightful place among other National Libraries.
Next Step
Now that the National Library concept has been discussed at the staff level across the DOE complex, the next step is to vet the concept at higher levels. To this end, a presidential appointee or other senior official should formally state that the concept is worthy of serious consideration. Such an expression of interest would cause appropriate managers across the Agency to flesh out the concept, designing it for maximum benefit to the Agency and participants, and, if deemed sufficiently beneficial, plans for launching an initiative would be proposed.
For Additional Information Please Contact:
Walter L. Warnick, PhD., Director
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
http://www.osti.gov
Phone: (301) 903-7996
Email: walter.warnick@science.doe.gov