WorldWideEnergy: A paradigm shift in advancing energy

information access

Ms. Deborah CutlerInternational Program Manager

Office of Scientific and Technical Information U.S. Department of Energy

ICSTI Technical Activities Coordinating Committee Workshop19 Jan 2015

Berlin, Germany

Speech Outline

• What is WorldWideEnergy.org?

• Why is it a paradigm shift?

• What does WWE have and how does it work?

• Sample screens showing functionality

• Conclusion

• Federated search system modeled after

WorldWideScience.org

• Focused on energy-related databases, portals and websites

(over 1000 resources searched)

• Language element enables cross-lingual searching (with the

aid of Microsoft® Translator). Four languages supported:

English, German, Spanish, and Swedish

• Real-time searching for many systems; periodic index built

for some, to speed search results return

What is WorldWideEnergy?

• First, understand the model on which previous

information exchange took place. Country participants:

• funded own information collection, central exchange

• collected information published within their borders

• created standardized metadata, in English, which

was then sent to central location (Vienna for INIS,

Oak Ridge for ETDE)

• Sent full text, as copyrights permitted; paper

converted to microfiche in early times, then

electronic

Why is it a paradigm shift?

Old paradigm

• Countries: identification of in-scope information, acquisition, translation (English titles and abstracts), metadata creation, subject analysis (based on thesaurus), and full text-related tasks: mailing paper, then scanning, PDF creation

• Centrally: collected and processed, error and authority checked, database updates made available

• Early days, database only available through large commercial systems or CD-ROM; since 1999, also directly offered on the web

• Began in 1987. ETDE World Energy Base (ETDEWEB) debuted in 1999

• Access limited to only member countries for many years

• Broadened to developing countries in 2008, worldwide in 2013

• Contents in 2014: over 5.1 million citations and well over 500,000 pdfs directly on site, plus over a million doi links

• Although centralized costs declined, costs for countries steadily increased, while budget-policy makers viewed little need for such efforts, given what was already available on the web

• After 27 years, the ETDE agreement was not renewed for another term

ETDEWEB brief history

• Different information sharing model developed in ETDE’s final year

• Discussions held in 2013/2014 to ensure continued availability of the valuable information collected through ETDE’s many years of exchange, should ETDE end

• WorldWideEnergy.org Beta (WWE) debuted in 2014 with ETDEWEB one of the many resources searched

• Several countries agreed to continue efforts for WWE after ETDE ended and encourage its growth. Entities involved:• USDOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical

Information• FIZ Karlsruhe• Swedish Energy Agency

New model/paradigm

Paradigm shifts

• Resources required to be a supporter greatly reduced:• No acquisition costs• No longer need to create metadata in

common format, subject analysis, or send records (do need to identify resources to be searched)

• No translation requirements to create titles/abstracts

• Centralized functions and resources minimized

• Able to broaden content easily to include other energy-related information of interest to users

• Timeliness of information can be real time

WorldWideEnergy.org

Featured Searches

Main search

Language options

• Databaseso ETDEWEB (all energy areas, all types)o INIS Collection (nuclear energy focus, all types)o Esp@cenet (worldwide patents)o EU Bookshop (books, reports, etc.)

• Portals/multinational siteso Reegle (clean energy focus)o National Library of Energy (US) (all areas, types)o International Energy Agency site and international agreement websites o IRENA, UN sites (renewables, mostly)

• Country-identified Websiteso German sites (over 900)o Swedish sites (only a few so far)o Spanish siteso Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

(see the end of the help file on the website for a more detailed list)

So, what does WWE search?

Select resources

(check boxes)

Advanced Search Screen

Select language

Search in German, multi-language results

Narrowing, Filters

Click to translate results

Change sort order

Translated results

Shows PDF links, if available

German and English shown

1) Search query

Wikepedia and EurekAlert

When all sources complete,can choose to include or not

See what each resource found

Limit to any resource with results

Link to resource content

• Resources searched may have a variety of formats and sometimes limited metadata

• Very specific searching not always possible across sources

• Searches take longer, and sometimes one or more sources are not available at search time, or time out

• Information has to be on the web already (many previous ETDE ‘sources’ do NOT have their information up)

Model trade-offs

Conclusions

• International information exchange is evolving• Still value in having an entry point to allow

focused searching of energy-related content • There remains a lot of energy-related content

that is NOT on the web, or not so easily findable with current systems

• WorldWideEnergy is a good resource but could be even better with greater participation and more languages supported

Feedback and/or questions are welcomed