Do You Have a Favorite Science Teacher? Adopt-A-Doc in Their Honorby Debbie Nuchols 30 Aug, 2012 in Products and Content
What is Adopt-A-Doc? Adopt-A-Doc is another way OSTI is working to increase the availability of important research. You can be a part of accelerating scientific discovery and help make important research available online by sponsoring the digitization of any adoptable U.S Department of Energy (DOE) technical report. Your report will be made full-text searchable by DOE search engines like Science Accelerator.gov and Science.gov; as well as be exposed to general purpose search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The Adopt-A-Doc database currently has over 200,000 technical reports that have not been digitized and are available for adoption. You may find a technical report that you want to share with others or you think worthy of making broadly available on the web to support the advancement of science. The Adopt-A-Doc service is available for a nominal fee and allows you to request recognition via a certificate of appreciation indicating that the electronic technical report was made possible by your contribution. The certificate will appear as the first page of the document for the indefinite future. You may also request an acknowledgment in honor or in memory of a recipient. For more information, please visit www.osti.gov/adoptadoc, or contact Debbie Nuchols at nucholsd@osti.gov or (865) 576-5699. Related Topics: Adopt-A-Doc, appreciation, certificate, digitization, electronic documents, honor, memory, scientific information Read more... |
Preservation Week 2012, April 22-28by Kate Bannan 24 Apr, 2012 in Science Communications
Preservation Week was created in 2010 because there are over 630 million items in collecting institutions such as libraries that require immediate attention and care. Preserving books, articles and other important information is no easy task because as many as 80% of these institutions have no paid staff dedicated to carry out these activities, and 22% operate without any collections care personnel. Complicating matters, it is estimated that 2.6 billion items are not protected by an emergency plan, which means these resources are in jeopardy should a disaster strike. One way to protect and preserve these resources, as well as make them more readily available to a wider audience, is digital preservation. Digital preservation is active management of digital content. Some items are created in a digital format, but many (and all older documents) have to be converted from their original physical format into a digital format. This takes time and can be costly to do, so many collections remain in non-digital formats. OSTI is the office that develops and maintains efficient, state-of-the-art tools for access and delivery of research results from the entire Department of Energy. OSTI fulfills Department of Energy responsibilities related to the collection, preservation and dissemination of scientific and technical information emanating from the agency’s R&D activities and makes the information globally available in real time, via multiple formats, in ten languages, mobile – at no cost to the user. OSTI is dedicated to the principle that to advance science, research must be shared. For more than 60 years, OSTI has been a pioneer and lead in open government,and has a proven track record in the delivery of groundbreaking information, tools and services. OSTI’s most recent contributions to... Related Topics: digitization, DOE Green Energy, preservation, Science.gov, ScienceCinema, ScienceEducation.gov Read more... |
You Can Be a Part of Accelerating Scientific Discovery!by Susan Tackett 13 Aug, 2009 in Products and Content Did you know that you can help make important research available online by adopting a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) technical report? There are more than 300,000 DOE technical reports in need of digitization. In fact, most DOE technical reports from the 1940s to 1991 are still only available in hard copy or microfiche. This means that important research is not electronically accessible by researchers and the public. You may find a technical report that you want to share with others or you think worthy of making indefinitely available on the web to support the advancement of science. When you search for important science information in your area of interest, you can choose to sponsor the digitization of any adoptable technical report. The cost is $85 (approximately the same cost as ordering a hard copy). You can request recognition via a sponsor "certificate" indicating that the technical report was made electronically available through your contribution. The certificate will appear as the first page of the document. Or, you may request an acknowledgment in honor of . . . or in memory of . . . , etc. to appear as the first page of the document. However, if you prefer to be an anonymous sponsor, no recognition will be placed in the report. ...Related Topics: Adopt-A-Doc, digitization, doe, technical reports Read more... |
ROI of 10,000,000% -- Would You Invest?by Brian Hitson 22 Jul, 2009 in Products and Content Even the most outrageous Ponzi scheme couldn't promise a return of 10 million percent, but that's the return to be realized by opening the Department of Energy's historic R&D findings to the web. Yes, you have to accept certain assumptions, but it's not a major leap. Let's review the math. Since the early 1940s (even before the Atomic Energy Commission -- a DOE predecessor), the U.S. government has been investing billions of dollars in energy-related and basic scientific research. Up until the late 1990s, most of the results from this work were recorded in papers (literally). The vast majority of these papers are under the watchful eye of DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). Since 2000, DOE's R&D reports have been generated entirely electronically; so, all of these are available on OSTI's Information Bridge web product. And, through a combination of its own efforts and collaborations with key partners such as the IAEA's International Nuclear Information System (INIS), OSTI has been able to digitize technical reports dating back to the early 1990s -- also available through Information Bridge. In addition to these efforts, OSTI is also trying other innovative approaches, such as Adopt-A-Doc, where individuals or organizations can sponsor the digitization of individual reports or small subset collections. But that leaves essentially... Related Topics: Adopt-A-Doc, digitization, Information Bridge (IB)
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What's in the OSTI Legacy Collection?by Tim Byrne 20 Mar, 2009 in Products and Content The DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information legacy collection contains an estimated one million technical reports representing six decades of energy research that is, for the most part, unavailable in electronic format. On average, OSTI receives close to two hundred requests each month to digitize specific reports, with the vast majority of the requests coming from DOE employees and contractors. The legacy collection represents an enormous investment in research and development from the Atomic Energy Commission, Energy Research and Development Administration and Department of Energy. With the growing tendency of many researchers to rely solely on research information available electronically, this incredibly valuable resource collection is often ignored. By not having electronic access to previous research, scientific advancement may be diminished and funds wasted duplicating what has already been done.
OSTI has recently implemented the Adopt-a-Doc program that allows the general public to pay for the digitization of a document of their choosing. Documents in need of digitization can be identified by searching the Energy Citations Database and clicking on the Materials available for digitization box on the Fielded Search window. This is proving to be a popular service. Unfortunately, with the level of digitization that OSTI can currently handle, it will take a very long time to digitize the entire legacy collection.
The birth of the OSTI legacy collection really began with the declassification and distribution of reports from the Manhattan Project. Following the end of World War II, our nation was inquisitive and interested in the government's hitherto top-secret program on... Related Topics: Adopt-A-Doc, AEC, digitization, doe, Energy Citations Database (ECD), erda, legacy collection, Nobel Prize, osti Read more... |
Approximately 10,000 DOE research documents added to the Information Bridge searchable databaseby Michelle Turpin 17 Apr, 2008 in Products and Content
Our OSTI team recently completed digitizing and uploading to the Information Bridge database about 10,000 documents issued by the U.S. Department of Energy (from 1991 to 1994). This means that citizens can now search this database and rapidly download these documents in full text - all for free. The exciting part? Previous to this upload, these documents were very difficult to find - either on the Internet or in hard copy. Even more exciting? These documents bring the total Information Bridge Energy Department reports (issued from 1991 to present) to more than 165,000. This research is in science fields such as physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy, etc. OSTI plans to continue digitizing DOE legacy documents so that you can find even more science information on the Web. The Information Bridge is a DOE Science Accelerator resource. Michelle Turpin Information Bridge Product Manager OSTI
Related Topics: digitization, Information Bridge (IB), technical reports Read more... |
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