STIP Managers Teleconference
Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Teleconference Participants: Mimi Legan (CHO), Kevin Schmidt (SRS), Gayla Bratton (HNF), Scott Gibson (ORAU), Marsha Fish (WCH), Leslie Brown, Debbie Caver (SRO), Deborah Black (HQPR), Dale Claflin (INL), Charlie Lovejoy (INLICP), Dave Hamrin (ORNL), Alison Easter (AMES), Janine Ford (NNSASC), Kim Johnson (ANL), Mary Hale (ANL), Val Gaines (ANL), Theresa Connaughton (LANL), Isom Harrison (LLNL), Nancy Doran (PNNL), Donna Lawson (Y-12), Dennis Gound (ORNLSO), Cathy Wright (NETL-Albany), Sharon West (SLAC), Bill Prymak (GFO), Sharon Jordan (OSTI), Kathy Waldrop (OSTI), Judy Gilmore (OSTI), Jannean Elliott (OSTI), and Daphne Evans (OSTI)

Search Widget’s (Daphne Evans) - For the last few weeks, we have been developing widgets for several of our products. These are search widgets that can be downloaded and placed on your personal web pages, iGoogle or Facebook. You can also email these to yourself or others, or embed the code into a web page. We have had widgets in place for Science Accelerator and the OSTIblog for several months, but recently we have added widgets to Information Bridge, Energy Citations Database, DOE R&D Project Summaries, DOE R&D Accomplishments, and DOepatents. Science Conferences is next in line.

These widgets will also be available in the Library Tools and Special Services section of www.osti.gov.

LANL Publicly Available Documents (Theresa Connaughton) LANL has completed a review of over 9000 pre September 11, 2001, electronic documents that were publicly available. These documents had been pulled several years ago awaiting a decision on making these documents publicly available again. After much effort on the part of a LANL team these documents will soon be electronically available again via OSTI’s Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database. LANL continues their efforts in scanning even more of their STI collection so these will also be electronically available via OSTI’s information products in the near future.

Kudos for Argonne (Jannean Elliott) - The staff at Argonne National Laboratory received acknowledgement and praise for their hard work in collecting 6600 journal citations from the early 1990s for OSTI to review. These citations had never been submitted since OSTI was, at that time, procuring citations from journal publishers and from contracts with indexing groups who covered other, selected publications. Initial dupcheck efforts showed that, indeed, approximately 2300 of the 6600 were already in OSTI’s databases. Many people would have been satisfied that those 2300, at least, needed no further attention, but the Argonne staff, particularly Mary Hale and Frank Montagna, went the extra mile. They wanted to add information from their site to the existing records and make them better. It required working with Kathy Waldrop to get site codes changed (which aided OSTI’s ongoing site code cleanup project by the way), and the end result makes these 2300 records more retrievable because they now have ANL report numbers, ANL contract numbers, etc.

Of the 4000 or so remaining journal citations, the first set of 1000 has now been hand-checked…and another 200 have turned up as “already here.” Those 200 will also be enhanced. But, even better, there were 800 citations that were, indeed, new to OSTI and that contained some very important STI. These 800 were harvested into production in September, and they all have DOIs also that will help many DOE users link directly out to the full text.

The 3000 records still waiting to be processed will be completed during the first quarter of FY09. For digging up these records on their own initiative, for coordinating with us so that unnecessary duplicates were not created, and for working to make records we already had even better and more searchable, we want to thank Argonne for ourselves and on behalf of all our users.

Access Limitation = PAT - Sites were asked to finalize reviews and cleanup STI records in E-Link that had “PAT” as the sole access limitation when the publication date was over 5 years. This was to be completed by September 30, 2008. Items remaining with “PAT” only in the access limitation data field are in the process of being changed to UNL. For those sites who may have not reviewed their records these items will have a note in the “Other Information” data field on the DOE F 241.3 and DOE F 241.1 web forms to reflect a review must be completed before the document is digitized. In addition, the webforms are being revised to include a radio button in Part II that will have to be marked stating “I verify that the distribution/access limitation for the document being uploaded is accurate.”

Access Limitation = USO - We are receiving many requests to digitize documents that have US Dissemination Only limitations. We discussed the need to review these documents several years ago and have provided a list for your use via E-Link. There are still 1320 documents that have USO access limitations and sites will soon be asked to finalize the review of these items.

TAPping Update (Jannean Elliott) - TAP Name Changes Continue. In August 2008, we announced that the names of harvesting and batch upload were being changed, and, in fact, were going to be conceptually put under one “umbrella” name: Tagged Acquisition Protocols (TAP). Pages on the STIP website and on E-Link where batch upload or XML DTD and harvesting were referred to are in the process of being rewritten with their new names. In order to differentiate between the two protocols that now share the name “TAP,” you will see that harvesting is now “OSTI-to-Site TAPping,” and batch upload is “Site-to-OSTI TAPing.” This makes sense when you realize that harvesting is a process where OSTI reaches out and “taps” into the site’s server. Batch upload is a process where the site is the one reaching out and “tapping” into OSTI’s server.

Both the old and new names will be on the STIP and E-Link pages in order to ease the transition. The changes should begin to show up on the web pages within the next few days.

INIS Digitization Update (Judy Gilmore) - As previously reported via STIP announcement dated Sept 22, 2008, approximately 15,000 DOE Technical Reports have been digitized and are available on Information Bridge, and other OSTI products. These newly digitized reports resulted from efforts of the International Nuclear Information System (INIS), as funded by the IAEA, to digitize legacy holdings from member countries and reports range from 1978 forward. DOE sites will be notified of site specific information for their use and information regarding which reports are now available in electronic format. The OSTI/INIS collaboration promises to yield additional reports in the future and ongoing progress will be reported.

OSTP (Sharon Jordan) – Secretary Bodman responded in August to a Federal agency memorandum from Dr. Marburger, OSTP, relating to principles and policies to "ensure the communication and open exchange of data and results of research" as they apply to the release of news and information to the media and public as well as the sharing of data and research results at the scientific and technical level. The underlying reason for these principles is simple: science, science policy, and the greater public interest all benefit from a culture that is as open and transparent as possible. Accordingly, the Federal government should be committed to fostering such an open environment. The DOE response includes the role of STIP and references DOE O 241.1A.

News (Sharon Jordan) – A DOE press release was issued October 7 concerning the AEC and DOE support of Nobel Laureate Dr. Nambu. OSTI was able to provide documentation from technical reports and other STI sources in our databases to the DOE Public Affairs office, demonstrating once again the value of STI over time and the value of the STIP group.