June 2008
Listen Now
WorldWideScience Alliance Established
Music intro
WorldWideScience.org now has a permanent governing body – the WorldWideScience Alliance.
The Alliance was formally established June 12, as officials representing 38 countries gathered to sign the "founding document" in Seoul, Korea. These national and organizational commitments are important, as they will sustain and build upon WorldWideScience.org – which is the online gateway to science information issued from nations around the world.
OSTI is Operating Agent for WorldWideScience.org.
Dr. Walter Warnick, Director of OSTI, presided over the signing ceremony in Seoul.
Here he is, speaking to the newly formed Alliance:
" . . . Before I became the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information, I was directly involved in research myself and later supervised research programs. Bringing this experience with me when I became the OSTI Director, my over-riding interest has been what we in the information business can do to accelerate scientific progress. And, with WorldWideScience.org, I think we have arrived at a model that accelerates science on a global scale."
At WorldWideScience.org, anyone with Internet access can launch a single-query search of 32 national scientific databases and portals from 44 countries, covering six continents and nearly half of the world's population. Users of WorldWideScience.org can search more than 200 million pages of often hard-to-find science information.
Again, Dr. Warnick:
"Some people may think that Google and other commercial search engines are providing such access already. But they are not, because most of these national databases aren’t searched by Google. With their contents residing in the "deep web," this collection of databases as a practical matter is only searchable by the kind of federated searching technology underlying WorldWideScience.org."
Dr. Warnick noted OSTI's leadership role in developing WorldWideScience.org, and said:
"It is a bit of an understatement to say we're doing something new here. This is groundbreaking and pioneering territory. We are going where men and women have never gone before -- with WorldWideScience.org. And that is why I am particularly proud to be a part of it. And why I think the ceremony is so significant."
The signing ceremony was the culminating event at the 2008 General Assembly International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (better known as ICSTI). The Alliance consists of the 12 founding member organizations, plus the ICSTI. Science.gov, the Web portal to U.S. government science information, is one of the founding members of the WorldWideScience Alliance.
To learn more, visit www.WorldWideScience.org.
Music exit
