ADVANCING THE VIRTUAL GOVERNMENT:
A Survey of National Digital Library Initiatives in the Executive Branch

Walter L. Warnick, Ph. D., Director
Sharon M. Jordan
Valerie S. Allen
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information
March 10, 1999

Introduction: Federal Digital Information Is a Crucial
Component of a Virtual Government

• Several agencies are beginning to present their information to the public via the Web. The Department of Energy was recently presented a Hammer Award for its efforts. Currently, each agency is driven by its individual needs, and efforts are uncoordinated.
• The problem with digital resources now available through global networks is that they lack structure and organization. The long-standing value added by traditional libraries for information uniformity and standards should now be applied to the digital environment. Failure to do so will make Virtual Government more difficult to achieve.
• The use of the latest information technology is necessary to fulfill the National Partnership for Reinventing Government mission to create a government that "works better and costs less and gets results that Americans care about."
• Information technology is also key to realizing the power of partnerships such as the recently highlighted U.S. State and Local Gateway, a one-stop electronic link to federal information for state and local officials and employees. The attributes of this Gateway recognized by NPR are:

(1) users can quickly obtain information and no longer spend hours learning to decipher the federal bureaucracy nor conduct separate searches within each individual agency; (2) information is arranged by subject, making it easier to jump fences and find the information you are looking for and the agencies working on it quickly and efficiently; (3) subjects are sorted into 11 categories of federal information that are most in demand; and (4) several crosscutting topics relevant to all subject areas are identified, e.g., laws and regulations, contacts, and best practices.

• Information Age technology allows agencies, for the first time, to envision a searchable and comprehensive collection of information on topics of concern to each Executive Branch Agency and to make it available to the public. A fitting and proper term for such a searchable and comprehensive collection is "National Digital Library."
• Such National Digital Libraries would serve as important building blocks and prerequisite resources for realizing Vice President Gore's vision of Virtual Government.
• Because the application of information technology at each agency is a prerequisite for NPR to achieve its goals, NPR could advance its Virtual Government initiative by encouraging each appropriate federal agency to have a National Digital Library.
• The mere existence of a National Digital Library will not only foster the dissemination of information, but its preservation as well. Additionally, the term National Digital Library announces to the world that the agency has information resources of which it is proud.
• Several agencies have slowly begun to create National Digital Libraries.

Three Federal Agencies Already Have National Libraries

• Each of the three official National Libraries is making good progress in transitioning to the Information Age.
• National Library of Medicine (NLM) [http://www.nlm.nih.gov]

–	Created in 1956, NLM's mission is to aid in the dissemination and exchange of medical and public health information. NLM is an international participant as well as part of National Network of Libraries of Medicine, with eight regional libraries as satellites of the NLM system.
–	Two Web-based products, PubMed and Internet Grateful Med, are available for searching on MEDLINE.
–	In October 1998, NLM introduced MEDLINEplus, which offers organized links to a range of sources searchable online (a type of digital library), including extensive subject-specific databases, directories, dictionaries, news, and other information.
–	Other information initiatives of NLM include: image databases such as Visible Human anatomy project; a DocView system for delivering documents via the database; and a new historical Profiles in Science archival digital collection on the Internet.

• National Agricultural Library (NAL) [http://www.nal.usda.gov]

–	Begun in 1862, National Library status was achieved in 1962, with a mission to acquire, organize, arrange, preserve and provide access to agricultural information. NAL has satellite agricultural centers throughout the U.S., including regional document delivery systems.
–	AGRICultural OnLine Access (AGRICOLA) is a Web-accessible, machine-readable database of 3 million bibliographic records created since 1970, including the Online Public Access Catalog and Journal Article Citation Index.
–	AgNIC (Agriculture Network Information Center) is a cooperative, distributed network (i.e., a digital library) providing Internet access to agriculture-related information, subject area experts, and other subject-related resources.

• National Library of Education (NLE) [http://www.ed.gov/NLE]

–

The newest of the national libraries, NLE was established in 1994 with a mission to be the hub of education libraries, archives, and information providers in support of equal access to education information; it has satellite offices nationally and 6 regional educational offices and participates in international educational organizations.

–

A growing list of online resources includes: the ERIC bibliographic database, with over 950,000 records of documents and journal articles on education research and practice; ERIC full-text documents online; a Virtual Reference Desk; the ED Pubs On-line Ordering System; AskERIC Virtual Library; and the U.S. Network for Education Information (USNEI), a distributed network of information and service providers.

Conceptual Stage and Other National Libraries

• Two agencies have Web sites with an assortment of online information, self-proclaimed to be "national libraries."
• EPA National Library Network Program [http://www.epa.gov/natlibra/]

–	The mission of the EPA Library Network, established in 1971, is to improve access to information for EPA decision making and environmental awareness.
–	It is composed of 5 libraries in the Agency's Headquarters, 10 Regional and Field Offices, Research Centers, and specialized laboratories located throughout the country.
–	Access to the combined collections is provided via the U.S. EPA Online Library System (OLS), an Internet accessible, menu-driven database of the library holdings.

• National Transportation Library (NTL) [http://www.bts.gov/ntl/]

–	Created two years ago by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the mission of this library is to facilitate the exchange of information related to transportation.
–	An on-line searchable repository of materials from public and private organizations around the country is provided, with access to more than 2,000 full-text documents and databases.
–	In January 1999, the U.S. Department of Transportation's BTS and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop, test and implement a fully searchable, public-domain, Web-based version of the Transportation Research Information Service (TRIS) and to integrate it into the NTL.

Other Government Initiatives for Digital Collections/Libraries

• The momentum for making information available on the Web is growing with more dialog and activity among the various agencies.
• NSF is seriously exploring the development of a digital National library for science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. From the 1998 report of an NSF workshop, "Developing a Digital National Library for Undergraduate Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education," (referred to as the SMETE Library) is the following [See http://www.dlib.org/smete/]:

"The ... Library will be a federation of library services and collections that function together to create a digital learning community. Organizationally, the ... Library will consist of a small central operation with a wide range of partners. Some of the services and collections are already well organized; for these, the ... Library will be a gateway. Others exist but are poorly organized; for these, the ... Library will stimulate the creation of specific services. Some materials are fragmented, unorganized, or hard to find; in these cases the ... Library will build library services and may even manage specific collections.

The ... Library will take a broad view of science and technology.... [T]here is no hard distinction between the needs of .... students in formal programs, independent learners, and the general public. The .... Library could serve them all."

• An NSF proposal for "Science Online: Digital Libraries of Scientific Results" points out that the Federal government funds approximately $70B per year of scientific research, spread over many agencies. To create the maximum economic and social benefit from this work, it needs to be widely known and easily studied. Today paper publication involves delays and difficulties of access; in some fields such as high-energy physics and molecular biology, the use of the Web and computer networks has transformed information availability. Proposed is "All government-funded research should be Web-available, probably costing less than 0.1% of the cost of the research itself." [See http://www.lesk.com/sci-online/.]
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) FY 2000 budget includes $10 million in the President's FY 2000 budget for a new leadership initiative to support the creation of a National Digital Library for Education, part of the President's Educational Technology Initiative. This initiative includes activities among IMLS, NSF, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Park Service and is another example of the range of participants that are embarking on creating digital libraries. IMLS, an independent grant-making agency created by the Museum and Library Services Act of 1996 (P.L.104-208), would fund the creation of digital versions of literary collections and make images freely available online to students and the public at large. The proposal involves additional monies toward developing the Internet as a better tool for science and math education and for making other collections available online. [See http://www.imls.fed.us/budgetrq00.htm.]

Interagency Library of Science and Engineering: Pilot

• CENDI is the interagency coordinator of information content organizations in the Executive Branch, composed of Senior Scientific and Technical Information (STI) managers from ten major programs in nine U.S. Federal Agencies: Commerce; Education; Energy; Environmental Protection Agency; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Agriculture; National Institutes of Health; Defense; and Interior [http://www.dtic.mil/cendi/]. CENDI members also conduct joint projects of mutual interest.
• CENDI is spearheading a proof-of-principle project to demonstrate universal logon and distributed searching of databases across multiple Federal Agencies. The "Interagency Library of Science and Engineering: Pilot" is viewed as a bottoms-up demonstration of the capability of an interagency National Library. DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), the Defense Technical Information Center, and the National Air Intelligence Center are each contributing a scientific and technical information database restricted to government and contractor employees. The Air Force is leading the effort and contributing software called "Broadsword" that will enable universal logon and distributed search. When this pilot goes live, users at any one of the participating agencies will be able to logon once to get access to all three databases, and then do distributed searches across all three with a single query. The Interagency Library pilot is to be demonstrated on April 6.

Initiatives of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)

• OSTI is actively pursuing making DOE's STI broadly available through the Internet.
• DOE Information Bridge, the recent recipient of a 1999 NPR Hammer Award, was made publicly available through a partnership with GPO in April 1998 to provide free, desktop access to the intellectual discoveries of DOE's research and development projects [http://www.osti.gov/bridge.]

–	It provides access to a growing collection of over 30,000 full-text documents (2.5 million full-text pages).
–	The Information Bridge could be one part of the foundation for a national library. This foundation is being created as a by-product of the transition to the Information Age which OSTI and DOE need to make.
–	Digital products like the Information Bridge make it possible to plausibly envision—for the first time—making available to users a comprehensive collection of scientific and technical information in disciplines of concern to DOE. Such a collection would be at the heart of a national library, as one could not plausibly claim to be a national library without such a collection.

• EnergyFiles: Virtual Library of Energy Science and Technology, recipient of a 1999 NPR Hammer Award, is comprised of over 400 digital scientific and technical information collections in 14 energy-related subject categories and a multi-disciplinary area [http://www.osti.gov/EnergyFiles.]

–	Content includes scientific and technical databases, electronic journals, full-text documents, preprints, and conferences, as well as workspace tools to facilitate information use.
–	Features a language translator to translate scientific and technical information from 10 different languages to English, and from English to Spanish or French.
–	A proof-of-concept distributed search – using one search query across 5 databases developed at OSTI, a DOE Environmental Management database, as well as across DTIC, EPA, and NASA databases – will soon be available.

• The R & D Project Summaries Web Database, recipient of a 1999 NPR Hammer Award, contains key corporate information relating to over 14,000 R&D projects performed since FY95 by DOE's laboratories and other installations. The Web application was made available to DOE customers and stakeholders, including the public, on June 1, 1997 (http://www.osti.gov/rnd/dbhome.html).
• PubScience [under development; http://swa117.soph-ware.com/www-idea/demo/idea.html]

–	Modeled after PubMed, plans are to have a fully functioning system to bring scientific and technical journal citations and full-text journal articles to the Internet in place by the year 2000.
–	PubScience will benefit the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) consortium and its users by providing access, under consortium licenses, to expensive scientific journals previously purchased individually in paper.

The Foundation Is Laid at DOE

• Collectively, these efforts are the basis of a national library concept for DOE, described in a concept paper [see http://www.osti.gov/concept.html].
• Three OSTI-developed systems were highlighted in the inaugural issue of Vice President Gore's "Access America On-Line Magazine." (See attachment.)
• The Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Partnership is a complex-wide collaboration working together to lead DOE in the Information Age. Partners include all the DOE national laboratories, other major contractor facilities, and Headquarters programs and field offices. STIP provides the infrastructure within the Department to coordinate the types of information activities and facilitate information access such as a national library would conduct [http://www.osti.gov/stip/].

Summary of Key Points

• Information Age technology offers the opportunity, for the first time, to envision a National Digital Library, that is, a searchable and comprehensive collection of information on topics of concern to each Executive Branch Agency, for each agency to make available to the public.
• Digital collections on the Web are continuing to grow, with more agencies creating National Digital Libraries. The existence of such National Digital Libraries announces to the world that an Executive Agency has information resources of which it is proud.
• National Digital Libraries could serve as important building blocks and prerequisite resources for realizing Vice President Gore's vision of Virtual Government.

DOE/OSTI-Developed Systems Highlighted in
Access America Online Magazine

Three of DOE/OSTI's systems were featured in three articles in the inaugural issue of Vice President Gore's Access America Online Magazine. The magazine's introduction says, "Access America Online Magazine features the stories of real people—federal workers and their customers—who are making the Vice President's vision of Access America come true." Check out http://www.accessamerica.gov.

The three systems are:

• The R&D Project Summaries Database, a listing of R&D projects in progress, opens DOE's multi-million dollar program of energy-related research to the scrutiny of the taxpayers who help fund it and who will benefit from the resulting technologies. The full article is available directly at: http://www.accessamerica.gov/docs/infrastructure_3.html.
• DOE's R&D report literature product, the DOE Information Bridge, gives free, convenient, and quick access to the world's largest collection of energy-related information. More that 33,000 reports are available in full-text, and more than 2.5 million pages may be searched for either full-text or bibliographic download. The full article is available directly at: http://www.accessamerica.gov/docs/infrastructure_4.html.
• The virtual library, EnergyFiles, is the umbrella under which DOE's resources are linked and accessible electronically. The full article is available directly at: http://www.accessamerica.gov/docs/productivity_virtualdirt.html.

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