Walter L. Warnick, Ph.D., Director
Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), ER-33
Phone: (301) 903-7996
E-mail: walter.warnick@science.doe.gov
April 1998
(Revised)
The Department of Energy is very much in the information business, as information is the principal product of the Department's research and development (R&D) programs. DOE needs its information to be visible, used, and praised to demonstrate the usefulness and importance of DOE and its R&D enterprise to its sponsors and taxpayers. Public support is essential for DOE; today, however, the public has little appreciation of the output of DOE R&D.
This paper describes a way for DOE to get the results, or product, of R&D used and praised.
The Department is building on a proud and commendable tradition as a producer of scientific and technical information. The information produced collectively by the federal government and the system of national laboratories since the middle of the 20th century includes the great bulk of recorded knowledge about nuclear energy and much about all the other forms of energy. For over 50 years, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has been collecting, announcing, and preserving this information and disseminating it to users. OSTI continues this function today in collaboration with its counterparts across the DOE complex.
With the advent of the Information Age, the technology exists to greatly improve access to this huge store of knowledge and deliver it electronically to desktops throughout the country. In addition, the great stores of information residing at national laboratories could be searched and accessed remotely. The Department is presented with a magnificent opportunity to make its scientific and technical information accessible more quickly, more conveniently, and more comprehensively.
Capitalizing on Information Age technology has become the central focus of the Department's Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), a Department-wide collaboration of various STI producers, processors, and users, which is facilitated by OSTI. OSTI and its partners are transitioning with a sense of urgency traditional information products and services to Information Age caliber technologies. The new technology allows OSTI and STIP to focus on serving researchers, research managers, and students directly, in addition to the information intermediaries who have been OSTI's traditional customers.
Just within the last year, OSTI has made considerable progress developing Internet-based tools and information resources and assembling them into a virtual library of energy science and technology called EnergyFiles. EnergyFiles provides one-stop access to over 30 different information repositories from across the DOE laboratories and other sites. Some of the key Departmental components of this virtual library currently available are:
Energy Files offers each DOE entity the opportunity to make individual site-specific information available on a wider scale. Other OSTI and STIP pilot projects with national laboratory collaborators are in process. In 1998, EnergyFiles will be expanded to include:
As these projects come to fruition, we will have a variety of information tools and resources which will revolutionize the way researchers do their jobs. Already, for example, one prominent high energy physicist reports that he spends over half his working hours using an Internet preprint server. Because the Internet can disseminate information faster, more conveniently, in full text, searchable, and cheaper per customer, it is reasonable to anticipate that within a few years it will be the preferred media for the bulk of newly created information in all fields, and end-users will come to rely on it.
Since formation of the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program Strategic Plan in 1997, the national laboratories, operations offices, headquarters organizations and OSTI have embraced the vision for a complex-wide collaboration to lead DOE in the Information Age. Such collaboration is a prerequisite to agency-wide progress to establish an Information Age infrastructure.
We, the stakeholders and partners of the Program, have bought into and support the concept of the virtual library now called EnergyFiles. As EnergyFiles matures and becomes more comprehensive in its coverage and technical capabilities, this unique repository of information could well be termed the National Library of Energy Science and Technology.
The National Library of Energy Science and Technology would be a virtual facility accessible at any time from anywhere to provide a foundation for education, research, and economic growth. Like any other facility, it would provide service to a variety of users. Unlike other facilities, however, the users need never be aware of bricks, mortar, or copper, nor would they be constrained or limited by site-specific collections. The library would provide a one-stop source of availability for a vast array of energy-related information, regardless of the "wing" of the library in which the information resides. Unlike branches of libraries with duplicate collections to serve localities, the wings of this National Library would be composed of distinctive collections based perhaps on scientific discipline or technology area rather than locality.
One of the major sources of energy-related scientific and technical information is scientific journals, which now capture the great bulk of new scientific and technical information within a matter of months of its creation. Collectively, journals comprehensively cover the topics of science and technology.
To provide reasonably complete coverage across the energy research spectrum, access to a significantly large collection of journals is essential. When journals are readily accessible and searchable, it would then be reasonable to seek designation as the National Library of Energy Science and Technology. The goal of the National Library should be to enable users to perform comprehensive online literature searches in the physical sciences related to energy.
OSTI has already taken the first step toward including journal literature; all the journals of the American Physical Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics are now available to all DOE headquarters employees.
The concept for journal literature at the National Library would follow the successful model for the life sciences pioneered by the National Library of Medicine. The model begins with a comprehensive online searchable collection of bibliographic and abstract records of journals. Such a collection for the physical sciences could be maintained by OSTI, as it has for decades. Unlike bibliographic collections of the past, however, hyperlinks to full-text journal articles would be part of the bibliographic record.
Because of copyright restrictions, user access to the full text would depend upon arrangements between the user and the journal publisher. If a user has an electronic subscription or works at a site like a DOE laboratory or at headquarters which would have a site license to the journal, the user could get to the full text directly. On the other hand, if a user did not have a subscription or a site license, he/she would need to establish new arrangements with the journal publisher before getting the article full text.
To complete the capability to perform online literature searches, references at the end of journal articles would include hyperlinks either back to the Library’s bibliographic collection or to full text articles, or both. A number of publishers in the life sciences have already begun the process of adding such hyperlinks in partnership with the National Library of Medicine.
In addition to journals, collections accessible through the National Library will include Government R&D reports and software, conference proceedings, and non-print resources such as film and video, audio, and image archives.
Within the current climate of resource constraints, OSTI is moving fast to build Internet-based tools and resources, which is tantamount to building the National Library of Energy Science and Technology. We are leveraging information resources of the laboratories through the Scientific and Technical Information Program Strategic Plan.
Under this Plan and as a result of our stakeholder partnerships, a working group of lab, field office, and headquarters people is tackling the problem of bringing electronic journals to desktops throughout DOE. Other working groups are exploring solutions for improving distributed searching, user-friendly formats, and other processes, which collectively represent an estimated $250 million DOE-wide STI enterprise. These efforts promise to create the premier U.S. facility for the collection, preservation and dissemination of the world's scientific and technical energy information.
The Executive Branch of the Federal Government has three National Libraries: The National Library of Medicine, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Education. The creation of each of the three National Libraries followed a pattern.
Each of the Libraries stemmed from organizations having well-established traditions in the information business, serving parent Agencies which perform R&D. They were not called National Libraries in the beginning. Only after many decades of experience were they so designated. The National Library of Medicine traces its roots to 1836, but it was not so designated until 1956. The National Agricultural Library traces its roots to 1862, but it did not become a National Library until 1962. The National Library of Education traces its roots back to the 1960s, but it was not until 1994 that President Clinton signed the legislation that gave it National Library status.
While OSTI has been in the information business since 1947 on behalf of DOE and its predecessor agencies, the advent of technologies of the Information Age is radically changing the way OSTI and its partners operate. The information enterprises at the national laboratories, which focus on their individual constituencies, are adopting new technologies as well. Through the virtual library begun by OSTI and enhanced through the STI partnerships, the labs will be integrally linked together along with OSTI into an information web capable of serving not only individual researchers, but the general public, nationally and internationally. Serving the public is an essential role of a National Library. Thus, the Department — through OSTI and its STI counterparts at the Labs — is quickly acquiring the key capabilities of a National Library.
The attention the National Library would command and the information accessibility it would make possible would gain for the Department much needed recognition for the scientific and technical information whose creation is at the core of the Department's R&D mission.