Good afternoon. It is an honor for me to be invited here today. I will give a brief overview of the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information and the exciting new activities that we are working on to make the Department's scientific and technical information (STI) available.

The Department of Energy as a whole is very much in the information business. Information is the principal product of the Department's R&D programs, and R&D is the bulk of what DOE does now.

The mission of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), operating from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for 51 years, is to collect, preserve, and disseminate STI generated and acquired by DOE programs. For approximately the last 20 years, we have had a partnership with the Government Printing Office (GPO). This partnership allowed us to provide the public DOE research literature in microfiche format via the Federal Depository Library Program. Many of your libraries house DOE report collections.

Today, OSTI is challenged with new expectations and sharply reduced budgets. We no longer have the luxury to continue both paper and electronic collection and dissemination. We are urging both the DOE organizations that generate and submit research reports and the customers who use DOE information to become automated as fast as possible. We are making significant progress.

Information Age technology offers us the chance to do a better job of ensuring overall stewardship and accessibility of STI. Just as the Industrial Revolution extended the reach of human muscle, the Information Age is extending the reach of human intellect. OSTI has aggressively moved from magnetic tapes, paper and microfiche format report processing and distribution into the electronic information age. We can now make STI available quicker, cheaper, more completely, and more conveniently. Recent initiatives have resulted in several systems that provide public access to DOE STI. I want to briefly mention four of those to you today.

First is EnergyFiles, our new Web-based Energy Science and Technology virtual library
[ http://www.doe.gov/EnergyFiles ] . It currently consists of over 100 DOE and non-DOE core collections. It will evolve into the primary umbrella under which information collections, electronic journals and preprints, engineering standards, database and document delivery services, and regulatory, funding and reference material are made available at the desk top, both for DOE researchers and the public user community.

EnergyFiles sets the stage for a digital National Library of Energy Science and Technology. This National Library would link energy resources locally, across the country, and internationally. It will be a virtual facility accessible at any time from anywhere to provide a foundation for education, research and economic growth to a variety of users. It will be a library with wings, not branches, as branches imply duplication. To actually establish a National Library requires Administration and Congressional action. Many hurdles remain, but OSTI is addressing the hurdles in a multi-year endeavor to build on the foundation that has already been laid.

Second, is the DOE Research and Development Project Summaries http://www.doe.gov/rnd/dbhome.html. It describes over 12,000 R&D projects currently ongoing within the DOE. This application was developed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information specifically to educate and inform the general public of R&D activities and receives over 800 accesses per day.

Third, is the OpenNet Web Site. References to 350,000 recently declassified reports are now available electronically via the Web as a result of the Department's ongoing Openness Initiative.

Finally, what I am especially excited about today is the fourth system, again a component of EnergyFiles, the DOE Information Bridge full-text Web site. The DOE Information Bridge is available through the GPO Access Web site beginning today. Here is the URL http://www.doe.gov/bridge. As a result of a joint effort between OSTI and GPO, anyone in the world that has Internet access can now get the results of DOE R&D in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental cleanup, energy technologies, and other topics immediately, at their desktop, when and where it is needed. Public access to the DOE Information Bridge Web site via the GPO Access service is a cooperative effort funded by GPO and DOE. This new full-text Web site, free to anyone, currently offers over 1.4 million pages of searchable text from DOE sponsored research report literature processed and distributed by DOE since January 1996 and additional reports are added each day.

Here's what it looks like! You will be pleased to know that there are no password or registration requirements! The features you will see include the capability to access, locate, search, and download full-text and/or bibliographic information electronically. Three formats, PDF, GIF, and TIFF are available for viewing the full-text page images, and one format PDF (image only) is available for immediately downloading full-text documents. An "Easy Search" offers a quick way to find items of interest. This option is similar to many popular Internet search engines. The "Advanced Search" option includes the ability to combine numerous fields to precisely describe what is wanted, to use Boolean logic at two different levels of the search, and the option to select from extensive pick lists as a search is conducted.

Senior leaders of DOE consider this system to be a significant step in our effort to respond to the new needs and requirements of the public and the research communities, to provide tools to efficiently and effectively leverage DOE's investment in research and development, and to respond to the Clinton Administration's challenge to move Federal programs and activities into the age of technology and information. This OSTI developed service represents a breakthrough in reducing the cost of obtaining and in expanding public access to results of DOE's annual 6 billion dollar research program. In addition, this is a major step in GPO's transition to a more electronic Federal Depository Library Program.

We believe that the DOE Information Bridge will have a significant effect on users and even on researchers submitting the research reports. Consider for a moment what the GPO agreement means for researchers. Their world is changing, too. While researchers have long had to produce their reports, many of them, especially on the basic research side of DOE, did not consider their reports as a primary mechanism for getting their information out. They looked upon DOE reports as an unwelcome burden. However, effective today, because of the Information Bridge, researchers' reports will be instantaneously accessible and searchable by 40 to 60 million people all across the country and the more millions of people who visit libraries--everyone who has Internet access. I think that full-text availability in a quick, convenient, no-cost, and searchable format like the Information Bridge will cause a change in attitude among researchers about their reports, as the Information Bridge becomes widely known.

Please attend the 8:30 debut, presentation, and demonstration of the DOE Information Bridge tomorrow morning in the James Room. We are excited about these new services and our plans for the future. We look forward to many more opportunities to bring timely and useful STI to the desktop through new information technologies and practices as we continue to build upon our current products and services and focus on the development of a National Library of Energy Science and Technology. And, we solicit your advice in reaching these goals and tackling the challenges that we face.