Lynn Davis, Information Services Specialist, OSTI
Dan Entingh, Senior Economist, PERI
Geothermal Resources Council Annual Meeting [exit federal site], San Diego, California
(Slide 1)
Slide 2: Introduction
- Since 1978, the DOE Geothermal Technologies Program (GTP) has sponsored about $1.5B of Geothermal research and demonstration programs.
- Though well documented, the results and history of the research have become cloudy to those working on geothermal today.
- DOE Geothermal Program Managers at the national labs began noticing research proposals for work already done.
- To avoid duplication, Princeton Energy Resources International (PERI) proposed to DOE to make earlier research more accessible using Internet search engines.
Slide 3: Two Surveys
PERI's Initial Survey in 2002 found two important geothermal bibliographic databases identified online:
- The Geothermal Resource Council (GRC) database which included citations for GRC Transactions, many DOE reports, and most of the articles in Geothermics, and
- The DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) databases which included approximately 500—600 full-text searchable geothermal reports in the Information Bridge and approximately 5,000 paper copy reports in the OSTI unclassified vault
Slide 4: Surveys (cont’d.)
Follow Up (2003–2004)
In the 2nd survey, PERI concentrated on a few main issues:
- What reports did the geothermal research teams at the Labs recommend to be archived?
Detailed recommendations were received from:
- Sandia National Laboratories, Idaho National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Staff at a number of other labs recommended that the project go forward, but did not have time to make detailed recommendations.
- Where should the repository be? OSTI was selected for 3 main reasons:
- OSTI already had a sophisticated searchable bibliographic system (the Energy Citations Database) connected to the Internet to which 1,200 or so PDFs were already attached via the Information Bridge collection.
- OSTI was an official organization of the Department of Energy, starting from the days of the Atomic Energy Commission, and therefore could be expected to have substantial longevity.
- OSTI has significant experience in scanning reports, based on special projects it conducted in the past.
- What form should the electronic documents take?
Here Roland Horne and Bill Cummings were especially helpful. They had both worked through the understanding that the most useful form of Adobe Acrobat reports are in “PDF-normal” form. This means that a bitmap image of each page is also processed through optical character recognition (OCR) software. That enables a search engine to find reports based on words in the text of the report, and enables the user to find important passages of the text based on the words. OSTI’s information technology group already knew this, but it helped immensely to have this point reiterated by geothermal experts.
Slide 5: Progress in 2005
- Using PERI’s search criteria from 2003—2004, OSTI scanned in about 3,200 DOE-funded reports from its unclassified vault.
- PERI identified a significant number of DOE geothermal “programmatic” reports not deposited at OSTI, wrote abstracts for them, and shipped them to OSTI for scanning. These reports included many Proceedings of the Geothermal Program Review, and all issues of the Geothermal Progress Monitor reports. The programmatic reports will allow future analysts to understand how the Geothermal Program was structured, and the main areas and questions it tried to address.
- All of these reports are now marked by the words “Geothermal Legacy” in the OSTI databases.
Slide 6: Work in 2006
GTP, OSTI, and PERI seek missing reports
DOE decided in federal fiscal year 2006 to support a major effort to try to find many more reports covering DOE sponsored research. Thus, GTP, OSTI, and PERI have worked to find reports covering DOE sponsored research that never arrived at OSTI. One example of these is the numerous orange-covered reports from the University of Utah Research Institute (UURI). This center of expertise was not a DOE National Lab so the requirement that UURI send all of its DOE-funded output to OSTI seems to have been enforced only sporadically.
Potential Sources Include:
- National Laboratories.
Here we have worked with librarians at the Laboratories to help us to find historical documents that fit the criteria of being part of the GTP/OSTI Geothermal Legacy collection. OSTI staff are working this part of the project, since each Laboratory already has a staff member who serves as a main point-of-contact to OSTI. -
Scientists & Engineers with small collections.
About 30 such “Geothermal Specialists” have been identified. They are being asked to nominate reports that should be in the Legacy collection, either from their own work or that of others. PERI is helping these folks search an OSTI “Master Reports” list (an EXCEL file) to figure out if the report has already been scanned. -
Organizations or individuals with potentially large collections.
Here, what has to be done is a little more complicated, because there are a variety of special conditions and needs related to comparing a long list of reports to the OSTI Master Reports List.
Slide 7: Eureka!
Today... there are more than 15,000 citations/reports at OSTI with “geothermal” as the subject category.
Of those 15,000+, more than 6,000 “Geothermal Legacy” reports are now searchable and downloadable.
The collection is growing and can continue to do so with your help.
Slide 8: Legacy Collection Resources
Here is an idea of the collections included: National Labs, universities, organizations' or individuals' own collections. The information is detailed and will be available online for your convenience after the conference. Handouts are also available. Of course, some of these numbers are still growing…
National Laboratories:
| Lab | Number | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Brookhaven | 130 | |
| Idaho | 262 | * |
| Lawrence Berkeley | 616 | |
| Lawrence Livermore | 397 | |
| Los Alamos | 613 | |
| NREL | 13 | |
| Oak Ridge | 117 | |
| Sandia | 417 |
Organizations or Individuals:
| Entity | Number | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Dick Benoit | 9 | |
| Dave Blackwell | 66 | |
| GRC | 16 | ** |
| Meridian | 74 | *** |
| Ted Mock | 19 | |
| OIT Geo-Heat Center | 80 | * |
| PERI | 163 | |
| Rogers Eng. Co., Inc. | 38 | |
| Sentech | 115 |
Universities:
| Entity | Number |
|---|---|
| California, San Diego, LA, Riverside | 10 |
| Duke | 6 |
| Penn State | 10 |
| Southern California | 17 |
| Southwestern Louisiana | 17 |
| Southern Methodist | 17 |
| Stanford | 137 |
| Texas | 23 |
| Utah Research Institute | 12 |
NOTES:
Slide 9: Legacy Document Types
| Entity | Number |
|---|---|
| Technical Reports | 4272 |
| Conference Papers | 2354 |
| Book/Monograph | 90 |
| Conference Proceedings | 73 |
| Journal Articles | 28 |
| Miscellaneous/Other | 24 |
| Thesis/Dissertation | 7 |
| Patent/Patent Application | 4 |
| TOTAL | 6852 |
In addition to “where” the documents come from, this provides an idea of the types of documents represented in the Legacy collection. The greatest focus has been on Technical Reports.
For some of the larger proceedings documents, we’ve scanned in the individual papers to improve document searching and download time for items of interest. You’ll also see the relationships…that is, links…from one paper to another for the respective proceedings. The links are shown in the individual record citations. We’ll be interested to hear if you find the linkages and availability of paper-by-paper vs. entire proceedings is worthwhile.
Again, these numbers change weekly as reports are added to the database. Earlier last week, there were 6,852 full-text documents in the legacy collection. Some 17,000 geothermal-subject records and documents were available.
Slide 10: Finding Geothermal Reports
OSTI has various database interfaces to its unclassified collections.
In addition to the DOE Information Bridge and the Energy Citations Database, you will want to visit the recently updated Geothermal Technologies Subject Portal at:
We have worked to provide a simple-to-use Basic Search and a detailed or Advanced Search to refine your search or find a specific item. Results from both searches can be sorted and organized to enhance and better pinpoint the user's findings.
Slide 11: Basic Search
The next few slides will give an idea of how the searches look and work.
This is a BASIC SEARCH on the name of researcher “R.L. AAMODT”.
- Input your TERM in the “SEARCH FOR” blank (put multiple terms and phrases in “double quotes”).
- Then select ENTER.
- You may choose also to “SORT BY”…publication date or report number, for instance.
Slide 12: Search Results
The next screen shows “SEARCH RESULTS”. Note that your search term is highlighted where it appears. You will also find appearances of your search term highlighted in the RECORD CITATION. Individual record citations may be opened by clicking on the TITLE.
Slide 13: Sort
To pinpoint or re-organize your findings, you may choose (again) to SORT the results differently,…
Or to SHOW additional information in the results list…as detailed in the inset.
In this case, perhaps you’d like to see the SUBJECT terms displayed for each of the records.
Use the pull-down arrow on the SHOW menu, and…
Slide 14: Search Results
The SEARCH RESULTS are re-displayed and now show the SUBJECT terms…as pointed out, here.
Slide 15: Full-Text Documents
Getting to the heart of the matter. Full-text documents.
This is one of the primary benefits of the GTP's Legacy Project. Documents that have been sitting in PAPER copy in our VAULT (and elsewhere) since the 1970s, are now scanned and searchable online. Remember, the Geothermal Technologies Subject Portal enables you to search BOTH the records and full-text reports. To VIEW or DOWNLOAD reports, CLICK on the PDF ICON.
Slide 16: Scanned Report
This is an example of a scanned, original report. Because it is a PDF-Normal document, you may also search the text once you have opened the file.
Slide 17: Contribute to the Geothermal Legacy Collection
If you are interested in growing this collection with additional, worthwhile geothermal legacy reports — as several at this conference have commented already, please note this contact information.
Contacts:
- Lynn Davis, DOE OSTI
865.241.6435, davisl@osti.gov - Allan Jelacic, DOE GTP, allan.jelacic@ee.doe.gov
- Dan Entingh, PERI, Roanoke, VA, dentingh@cox.net
DOE, OSTI, and PERI are seeking follow up to previous recommendations and additional contributions from the sources identified earlier.
Slide 18: Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Program through the following contract vehicles:
- DOE Funding Directly to OSTI: Contract DE-AT05-01TE30204
- DOE Funding to PERI via OSTI: Task Order IIA-9000-032
The authors gratefully acknowledge significant help from the following people:
- Dr. Allan Jelacic, Dr. Roy Mink, and Jay Nathwani of the DOE Geothermal Technologies Program,
- Ed Eugeni, Shehrazade Mazari, and Jim McVeigh of PERI,
- Patty Simmons and the crew at OSTI, and
- Roland Horne and Bill Cummings, consultants to the Geothermal Legacy Project
