OVERVIEW Statutes have been consistent and broad in their requirements for DOE to disseminate its scientific and technical information. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 are two of the most cited and call for the dissemination of scientific and technical information (STI) to the public. Since 1947, the various incarnations of OSTI have been supported within the Department as the means to help meet the requirements for information dissemination on behalf of the Department and predecessor agencies. CHRONOLOGY The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which was created by the Atomic Energy Act in 1946, initiated a technical information program in 1947. At first, the Technical Information Division (TID) was managed locally by the Oak Ridge Operations Office (ORO), but in 1948, the reporting relationship was changed and the function, though still physically located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, began reporting directly to Headquarters as it does today. The Department's enabling legislation and later statutes require that its technical information be publicly available and maintained in a central collection, which allows the Department to effectively ensure that it receives the R&D results from its many contracts and grants and to provide an accessible base of knowledge to fulfill its science mission. The advantages of having a centralized information dissemination function, as opposed to having labs and contractors doing it individually, were recognized from the beginning. The most often cited advantages include reduced redundancy, improved cost effectiveness, improved accountability, improved information consistency, and maintenance of a central STI archive. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the programmatic mission of TID was to "plan, develop, maintain, and administer all services and facilities required to accomplish the dissemination of scientific and technical information for the encouragement of scientific progress and to promote the ultimate sharing on a reciprocal basis of information concerning the practical industrial application of atomic energy, as provided for in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946." This called for three basic STI functions to be established that continue today: collection, preservation, and dissemination, with separate operations for classified information. In the beginning, announcement journals of bibliographic information and abstracts were the state-of-the-art for disseminating information about declassified and unclassified reports. An abstracting service and printing plant were established. An announcement journal, Nuclear Science Abstracts (NSA), began in 1948 and soon became world famous. NSA broadened the type of literature announced (adding journal articles, books, international literature, etc.-not just material produced by AEC) so that it became comprehensive in its coverage of nuclear science. In addition to the bibliographic information and abstracts in the announcement journal format, OSTI used the technology of that day to deliver full-text documents. In 1952, TID initiated document miniaturization (microcard/microfiche), a program designed to facilitate rapid and inexpensive dissemination of the full-text reports to the Government Printing Office (GPO) depository libraries, an outlet for public access to DOE STI. Information was a central component of the "Atoms-for-Peace" Program called for under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. On the domestic side, this effort ensured accessibility of nuclear science information to U.S. industry. On the international side, this effort involved negotiating bilateral agreements for cooperation between the United States and other nations that included the exchange of information and drafting of an organizational structure that would establish the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In the mid-1960's, OSTI (then the Division of Technical Information Extension [DTIE]) began using computers to store and exchange information to enable rapid and dependable searching of bibliographic information. OSTI personnel were instrumental in having the IAEA create the International Nuclear Information System (INIS) in 1969, which today promotes information exchange among 102 countries and 18 international organizations. In mid-1976, NSA was discontinued after 30 years and IAEA/INIS took on primary responsibility for publishing a printed nuclear announcement journal product known as Atomindex. In the 1970s, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 abolished the AEC and established the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). The Department of Energy Act of 1977 abolished ERDA and established the Department of Energy (DOE). These acts broadened OSTI's (then TIC's) role into the collection, preservation, and dissemination of non-nuclear related energy information. Building on the international cooperative relationships already in place, exchanges were expanded into non-nuclear areas and began involving the newly formed International Energy Agency (IEA). In 1974, OSTI began building the Energy Science and Technology Database (EDB) covering the full scope of energy, all literature types, and with world-wide coverage. Microfiche was still the norm for full-text distribution and archiving. By law (American Technology Pre-eminence Act and enabling legislation for the National Technical Information Service (NTIS)), OSTI has provided the Department's collection of technical information to NTIS, as all other federal agencies that produce technical information (NASA, DoD, National Library of Medicine, etc.) have also been required. NTIS then marketed and sold this information to the U.S. public and industry. Today, NTIS remains a primary source for public access to DOE STI along with the GPO, commercial database vendors, and OSTI itself. It has long been recognized that multiple outlets for DOE's STI are desirable. All outlets use the value-added services provided by the originating R&D sites and OSTI. During the 1980s, OSTI was instrumental in establishing the International Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE), an implementing agreement under the IEA. OSTI has served as the Operating Agent for this agreement since its inception, which now has 19 member countries. ETDE was established for the purpose of sharing non-nuclear energy information. Beginning in 1996, OSTI began capitalizing on new technology. Digitation of report literature became the norm, and microfiche production and the printing plant were ended in 1997. With the evolution of the Web, it has become possible for OSTI to serve the DOE researcher community directly, in addition to serving information intermediaries. Capitalizing on the new technology, OSTI is collaborating with GPO to provide direct access to the public, which is now feasible with only small incremental costs to GPO. GPO and DOE/OSTI continued their tradition of cooperation when they concluded an agreement in 1998 to make the DOE Information Bridge publicly available via GPO access. With this agreement both DOE and GPO have established an electronic mechanism that is intended to make DOE's STI publicly accessible for years to come. Throughout its history, OSTI has maintained responsibility in the policy areas of STI management, ensuring that the Department had strong, centralized leadership in a decentralized information environment. Recently, however, OSTI has been de-emphasizing command and control. In 1997, OSTI coordinated the Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Strategic Plan which promotes more mutually beneficial collaboration with STIP Partners at contractor and DOE sites. Although OSTI's name and chain of command have shifted several times, its core mission to collect, preserve, and disseminate scientific and technical information continues. In the last 52 years, the OSTI collection of STI has grown to over 1.3 million energy R&D Reports and over 4.7 million bibliographic citations of world-wide energy R&D Research. Over the past few years, OSTI has made significant strides into the Information Age: defining new electronic exchange formats; creating collections of digitized scientific and technical information; serving researchers directly; and developing an energy science and technology virtual library, EnergyFiles. The DOE Information Bridge, a component of EnergyFiles, provides a unique electronic dissemination tool that can be used by DOE and the public to locate, search, access, and obtain DOE STI without charge. Constantly, being expanded, the DOE Information Bridge has over 38,604 full-text with bibliographic records, 237,075 energy related bibliographic records, and over 2.4 million full-text pages. The DOE Information Bridge is expected to remain a key component in the future dissemination of DOE's information. OSTI's next programmatic challenge is working with publishers to bring journals to the desktop. OSTI is positioned well to meet customer needs by defining the next generation of information access and dissemination. |
