How We Got Here from There: The Last 20 Years of the STI Program

1. How We Got Here from There: The Last 20 Years of the STI Program Dave Hamrin and SharonJordan ORNL and OSTI April 2008

2. Overview • From "Command and Control" to "Collaboration" • From INFOTECH to STIP • From EDB and ITIS to ECD and E-link • From paper to electronic • OSTI’s perspective

3. From “Command and Control” to Collaboration OLD WAY: DOE Order 1430.2 put in contracts Actually FOUR orders in 1430 series of late ’80s "Who writes this stuff?" is a question contractors have about the Order Actually I wrote parts of them… Appraisals were done to ensure compliance to the Order That was the DOE way

4. From “Command and Control” to Collaboration NEW WAY: Order Re-Write meetings in Alexandria and Oakland change everything Streamlined from 4 to 1; first in DOE to do so Order is written collaboratively Order focuses on outcomes, not methods Overall, the similarities in interests of Feds and contractors are stressed

5. From INFOTECH to STIP OLD WAY: • Before 1989, OSTI Technical Information Meetings toggle between users of STI on even-numbered years (e.g., librarians) and producers of STI in odd-numbered years • Meetings had tons of attendees, but most of the meetings were prepared talks by OSTI staff with little or no discussion • Often, contractors sent representatives to OSTI meetings with no authority to speak for their sites

6. Technical Information Meeting of 1981

7. From INFOTECH to STIP NEW WAY: • Beginnings of STIP • First InfoTech in 1989; conference-like meeting • However, the core “STI representatives” met separately • Often, contractors sent representatives to OSTI meetings with no authority to speak for their sites • Now, attendees normally feel comfortable speaking for their sites

8. From EDB and ITIS to ECD and E-link OLD WAY: • The Energy Database (EDB) was the “big dog,” and was searchable via the ITIS system. It helped a lot to have ITIS training, and ITIS training was not easy to get • EDB was available in some other formats; one such format was as a ten-part database, where you had to load/reload ten different files to search all of EDB • Not everybody knew of the existence of the “non-EDB” databases like the NAT file and CAF file • For good reason! Special files were controlled access data

9. From EDB and ITIS to ECD and E-link • NEW WAY: • Between the Energy Citations Database and the Science Research Connection, just about anybody can find just about anything • As tools go, E-link just gets easier and easier to use • E-link capabilities keep expanding

10. From paper to electronic OLD WAY: • Contractors sent in paper copies to be microfiched • Only bibliographic data was searchable in databases and it had to be input letter-perfect • Users could buy “blowbacks” of reports. The phrase “portions illegible” appeared on many documents • The “full-cost-recovery” model proved to be expensive, and lack of timeliness from NTIS was a common complaint

11. From paper to electronic • NEW WAY: • Documents found almost instantly • Documents are full-text searchable • Documents delivered almost instantly • Documents are free

12. OSTI Perspective