November 11-15, 2001
“OSTI and
INIS: preserving the nuclear information past, leading the nuclear information
future”
Author(s): R.
Charles Morgan, Deputy Director/Manager, DOE/OSTI
Debbie Cutler, International Program Manager, DOE/OSTI
Global sharing of
information regarding the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology
remains as vital today as in the past. With the emphasis on nuclear power and
nuclear-related activities constantly shifting in various countries, it becomes
even more important to exchange new information worldwide and to preserve the
knowledge base of the past for future generations. My organization, the U.S.
Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information
(DOE/OSTI) has been a key player in providing and preserving access to new and
historical nuclear-related information for over 50 years. The purpose of this
presentation is to provide you with an overview of OSTI, let you know what has
been collected and preserved over the years, what key partnerships we’ve made
to enhance this collection, and what resources and tools we can offer you to
allow improved access to information.
The Atomic Energy
Acts of 1946 and 1954, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, and the Department
of Energy Act of 1977 all call for the dissemination of scientific and technical
information (STI) to the public. Since 1947, the various incarnations of OSTI,
beginning with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), have met this challenge.
The manner in which OSTI has done this has changed drastically in recent years.
We must constantly track and deploy new information technology every day. We at
OSTI welcome benchmarking against other information organizations, both inside
and outside government.
OSTI’s mission is
to collect, preserve, disseminate, and leverage the scientific and technical
information (STI) resources of the Department to provide access to national and
global STI for use by DOE, the scientific research community, academia, US
industry, and the public to expand the knowledge base of science and technology.
OSTI is responsible for leading the Department's Technical Information Program
(TIMP) and for providing direction and coordination for the dissemination of
scientific and technical information (STI) resulting from DOE research and
development (R&D) programs.
In the AEC
timeframe, announcement journals of bibliographic information and abstracts were
the state-of-the-art for disseminating information about technical reports.
OSTI’s announcement journal Nuclear Science Abstracts (NSA), begun in
1948, soon became world famous. As NSA evolved, the type of literature announced
was broadened to include journal articles, books, international literature, etc.
so that it was not just material produced by AEC but comprehensive in its
coverage of nuclear science. In the 1970’s, the subject matter was expanded to
include all areas of energy. The printed abstract journals evolved into online
databases, the largest of which became the Energy Science and Technology
Database or EDB. Today, Web databases contain much of this information (see more
detail under resources). The databases serve to preserve a history of who published
information and where it was made available.
Documents were also
collected and preserved, primarily report literature. OSTI received the full
text of the reports and offered document delivery services in early years. Over
the years OSTI has also received the full text of conference papers, journal
articles, computer codes and an occasional database, film, or videotape that
resulted from DOE research. Reports and other full text literature from
international partners are also part of the collection.
In 1952, document miniaturization (microcard/microfiche) began as an
approved archive method and an inexpensive way to deliver full text. Beginning
in 1996, digitization of report literature became the norm at OSTI, and
microfiche production ended in 1997. An increasing percentage of documents are
now available on web sites of the originating organization as well. OSTI creates
persistent URLs to these documents, and the preservation policies dictate OSTI
will be the archive, should the site no longer keep the link active. Technology
has allowed the focus to shift toward full text delivery at the desktop.
OSTI has over 1.5
million reports in its collection. While the greatest majority of the documents
exist in paper and microfiche, the collection is currently in digitized form
back to 1995. The good news is that all new material is available
electronically. OSTI had begun digitizing older reports as well. Some of the
more requested older documents are also in electronic form. The full text
collection since 1995 is kept online on magnetic disks.
Regrettably, after
several years of budget cuts, OSTI has been unable to continue the digitization
effort for older materials with its own resources. A few groupings of documents have also been digitized in
partnerships. One project with the Amarillo National Resource Center for
Plutonium allowed the digitization of many of the plutonium-related documents,
and a recent small project with the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) lead to
digitizing some key lattice experiment documents, including digitization of
microfiche containing computer coding and some engineering drawings.
In the fast reactor
area in particular, OSTI has approximately 39,000 documents from throughout the
world spanning the decades up through today. There were over 5,000 published in
the NSA period from 1948-1976, over 29,000 in the 1974-1994 EDB timeframe, and
over 3500 since 1995. The years 1976 and 1977 were the peak years for published
material in this area. Technical reports are the most prevalent form used for
publishing this type of information, with conference material and journal
citations about equal. Over 500 patents were also cited.
Partnerships have
also played a key role in broadening the collection. In addition to those with
other government agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for the
last 30 years, OSTI has partnered with the International Atomic Energy
Agency’s International Nuclear Information System (IAEA/INIS). INIS today has
103 countries and 19 international organizations. OSTI serves as the U.S.
Liaison organization to INIS, bringing the benefits of INIS membership to the
U.S., and providing U.S. information for the INIS database. As both the nuclear
industry and the information technology environment have evolved, so have OSTI
and INIS, today offering valuable information resources to the nuclear community
via the Web. Each has become an electronic virtual library of information, with
new tools and resources being added regularly.
OSTI also partners
with other countries as part of the International Energy Agency’s Energy
Technology Data Exchange (IEA/ETDE) agreement that covers the full scope of
energy information. OSTI is the U.S. delegate and the Operating Agent for this
agreement since 1987. A web
database (ETDEWEB) developed and maintained by OSTI contains the most recent
information exchanged through this agreement.
You have access to
many of the resources mentioned via OSTI’s own products or through those
available to users as a result of OSTI’s partnerships. The following
represents a brief listing of these resources. Brochures of some of these
products will be available at the ANS meeting. For more information about OSTI,
see www.osti.gov. For more information about
INIS and its various products and services, see www.iaea.org/inis.
Find out more about ETDE and ETDEWEB at www.etde.org.
Energy Citations
Database (www.osti.gov/energycitations).
Free. This newest OSTI product contains a large portion of the bibliographic
information collected since 1948 with links to full text when available. It
contains data from DOE and predecessor agencies, the AEC and the Energy Research
and Development Administration (ERDA).
DOE Information
Bridge (www.osti.gov/bridge). Free. This OSTI
product was one of the first of its kind in offering access to the full text and
also allowing full text searching for a large majority of the reports. The
public version contains the full text U.S. information collected since 1995.
EnergyFiles (www.osti.gov/energyfiles).
Free. This service allows searching across 500 heterogeneous databases and web
sites.
Preprint Network (www.osti.gov/preprint).
Free. Many nuclear-related sites are linked to as part of the preprint network
around the world.
PubSCIENCE. Free.
Provides for searching and accessing citations and links to scientific journals.
Access to the full text of the articles is controlled by publishers, typically
by a fee or subscription.
GrayLIT Network (www.osti.gov/graylit).
Free. This is a portal to full text from several government agencies available
through distributed searching.
Subject portals (www.osti.gov/subjectportals).
Free. Although there are currently no subject portals in the nuclear area, other
disciplines are available.
INIS Database (www.iaea.org/inis/inisdb.htm).
Subscription Fee. Available only to member countries. With over 2 million
records representing 30 years of published nuclear-related information
worldwide, the INIS database is available in several forms, including the recent
INISDB on the web.
The INIS Web
Services site (www.iaea.org/inis/ws/index.html)
(free) includes descriptions and links to other key nuclear information-related
sites.
ETDEWEB (www.etde.org/etdeweb).
(Free in most member countries) Available only to member countries. Based on the
DOE Information Bridge concept, ETDEWEB contains bibliographic information with
links to available full text. It contains U.S. and international information
exchanged through both the ETDE and INIS agreements since 1995.
Energy Information
Sources (www.etde.org/infolinks/links.html).
Free. The EIS site is a new service this year for ETDE. It contains links in all
energy areas in several categories.
Dialog - NSA and
EDB databases. Subscription and usage fees. Dialog has the complete NSA and EDB
bibliographic databases available online and on CD-ROM.