Contrails Digital Initiative

from a Documents Librarian point of view

Presented at:

NIDL Spring 2015 Meeting5/15/15

IIT – Galvin Library

Timeframe

• Germination (1996-1998)

• Initialization (1999-2000)

• Obstruction (2001-2002)

• Redesign & Reboot (2003-2004)

• Rebrand & On Demand (2005-2008)

• Capitulation & Celebration (2009-)

Germination (1996-1998)

Patron Requests

• Citations indicating government technical reports with WADC & WADD designations brought to Reference Desk

• A group of unprocessed reports, most with yellow covers, lived in the basement

• No shelf list or index of any kind

WADC & WADD?

• Became clear that the acronyms stand for Wright Air Development Center and Wright Air Development Division

• Bureaucratic umbrella organizations that provided a centralized administration of research efforts for many laboratories at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio

Let’s find call numbers!

Andriot:

Andriot:

Andriot:

Andriot:

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

Added call numbers

• We used D 301.45/6:yr-num, where “yr” is the year in 2 digits, and “num” is the number of the report for that year.

• The right stem was actually D 301.45/5:

• The D 301.45/6: stem was for a group of reports with report numbers “AF TR num”

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

Andriot

AndriotNot published by GPO:

Monthly Catalog

MoCat Key

“Black Dot” Titles

Item Numbers Indicated

WADC Titles

SuDocs Numbers

PB Number Indicated

Issuing Office

AD Numbers

Notices

Qualified Requesters

For sale to the general public

Printed “AD Number”

Stamped “AD Number”

Front Cover Statement

Handwritten “AD Number”

Stamped “PB Number”

NTIS Document

Recap of “Germination”

• Lack of information from the Monthly Catalog led to:– Assignment of the incorrect SuDoc number

to hundreds of reports– Assumption that each and every report we

possessed was distributed to depository libraries

Reality

• Even though SuDocs numbers could be found for pretty much all the reports, that fact did not indicate public availability

• Some reports we possessed were for sale to the public and some weren’t released to be sold to the public

How did we get so many?

• The reports were in paper format, but both ASTIA/DTIC and OTS/NTIS holdings are in microfiche

• Distributed to research organizations who had DoD contracts depending on their research subject

• Armour/IIT did research in materials science

Later reports

• Reports received through donation from the 1960’s sometimes had distribution lists

• It became clear that very few paper copies of most reports were distributed

• Recipients only received a small fraction of the overall series

Trouble Brewing

• We possessed materials we thought were fully public

• We created a database with metadata for the reports we possessed

• A plan to digitize and post the reports to a public website was hatched

• Wright Air Development Center Digital Collection was on its way!

Initialization (1999-2000)

Website Features

• IIT connection– The Illinois Institute of Technology, Armour

Research Foundation and IIT Research Institute were all involved in research that generated WADC Technical Reports, so we created a section to highlight the role of the institutions

Website Features

• Space Race– This feature highlighted the role of the

laboratories at Wright-Patterson AFB with regards to spaceflight research prior to the Apollo missions

– Before NASA was created, there was a possibility that the Air Force could have take the lead in spaceflight

Website Features

• Roswell– Many of the government explanations for

the supposed alien activity near Roswell, New Mexico had to do with the activities of WADC researchers

– Digitized both the relevant WADC reports and the two government monographs on Roswell

By 2001

• Digitized and posted approximately 400 reports, with about 800 more to go

• Had a fully fleshed out website, one focused on hits and then page views

• Digitization equipment difficult to work with and unreliable, and corners cut to boost numbers

Obstruction (2001-2002)

DoD Comes a Knocking

• Actually, it was emails and phone calls

• We were informed that many, actually most, of the reports we had posted had never been cleared for public release

• Could we please remove those reports

• Would have devastated our efforts

Worked with DTIC

• They searched their Private STINET database (now DTIC Online Access Controlled) to try to help us keep as much posted as possible

• Ended up removing many, many reports, many of which still reside in a offline network folder named “Removed”

Problem overstated

• Private STINET was a very dirty database.

• Additionally, report numbers were erroneous on a global scale

• WADC TR & WADD TR converted to ASD TR

• Led to low return on searches

Incorrect Distributions

• Additionally, there were many reports that were listed as “Limited Distribution” that had actually been released to the public.

• Evidence for this included cover statements, index entries and PB Numbers

Evidence of Public Availability

• We used evidence of public availability to justify re-posting many reports

• We informed DTIC of the fact that we felt their database was inaccurate and that we would repost reports that had evidence of public availability

• I guess they shrugged

More information

• The information just covered was the focus of the presentations from 2005-06, so I won’t go into great detail– See:

• http://hdl.handle.net/10560/1326• http://hdl.handle.net/10560/1327

Redesign & Reboot (2003-2004)

Website Redesign

• During 2003-2004 an effort was made to update the website

• Aesthetic and architecture of the new site followed the main library website

• Added a search engine function

• Created a Report Number matrix

• Received first major donation

Website Features

• Added and removed features from the “Historical Overview”– Removed “IIT Connection”– Added “Pearl Harbor”– Added “Image Gallery”– Added “Feature Report”– Digitized SuDocs from the “D 301.2:” stem

Report Digitization

• Gained access to Private STINET– Able to determine that many reports

actually were public, just had report number or spelling errors that made records hard to find

– Posted only those that DTIC agreed were public

– Created list of “limited” reports with evidence of public availability

Rebrand and On-Demand (2005-2008)

Rebranding

• Since the Wright Air Development Center was defunct, we were only web presence

• Gave the impression that WADC was a unit of IIT

• Decided to rebrand to Contrails

Benefits to rebranding

• Remove confusion about WADC

• Better reflected our broader digitization efforts– Donations of reports from other

laboratories– Many, many report numbers

• Domain name: contrails.iit.edu

Drawbacks to rebranding

• Contrails not unique enough– There are now many websites on the topic

• Wikipedia• NASA, FAA & NOAA• UIUC, Wisconsin-Madison• PBS• Company names• “Chemtrails” conspiracy• Currently Page 4 of Google results

On-demand Scanning

• Always receiving emails about reports that people desired

• Sometimes we had them

• Sometimes we didn’t

• Only resource online aside from DTIC Online, who are there to serve DoD and contractors, not public

On-demand Scanning

• Created dynamic links– If we had scanned the report, it would

created download link– If the report was Limited Distribution, it

would indicate that fact– If we didn’t possess the report, it would

make that clear– If we had yet to scan report, it would create

a “mailto” link to request scanning

On-demand Scanning

• Very successful initially

• Many scanning requests received and filled

• Depended on Google’s search engine algorithm, which followed and indexed our dynamic links

• Felt we could depend on this model

Capitulation & Celebration (2009 forward)

On-demand Scanning

• Requests began to drop off• Google had OCRed and indexed all of

our pdfs• Users weren’t being driven to our site,

and weren’t seeing our scanning request dynamic links

• Turns out, Google stopped indexing them

Fight Google?!

• Wanted to increase traffic to Contrails– Users bypassing site to download pdfs

straight from Google search– Missing dynamic links to request scanning

of reports we possessed but hadn’t digitized

– How to drive people to site?

Can’t fight Google

• Best bet was to change model– Return to heavier digitization rather than

relying on scanning requests– Once reports were posted, and indexed by

Google, accessibility to users was great– Who cares whether user is driven to our site,

if they get what they need– Anecdotal evidence of the value of our

efforts

Celebration

• Anecdotal evidence of value– Contrails.iit.edu showing up in

bibliographies• 4 Patents• 2 Books• 6 journal articles• 2 dissertations• 1 Conference paper

Soapbox Time

Threats to NTIS

• 1988: Discussion of privatization– Y 4.En 2/3:100-170– Y 4.Sci 2:100/5– Y 4.Sci 2:100-36– Y 4.Sci 2:100/84

• 1999: Plan to close NTIS– Y 4.Sci 2:106-37

Threats to NTIS

• 2012: NTIS’ Dissemination of Technical Reports needs congressional attention– GA 1.13:GAO -13-99

• 2014: NTIS’ Dissemination of Technical Reports needs attention– GA 1.13:GAO-14-781T

GA 1.13:GAO-14-781T

• 3 Major findings– NTIS’s fee based model is losing money

• Outdated funding model

– Reports are available elsewhere• Only 74% were available elsewhere

– Demand is higher for newer reports• 62% of 21st century additions to repository are

from the 20th century

Future role for NTIS

• Centralized shallow web indexing of all Federal technical report collections. NTIS should be the Google Scholar for technical reports

• Not all agency technical report sites are shallow web, for instance NASA

Increased indexing

• From the looks of it, there are 350,000 conference proceedings held by NTIS

• The papers from these conferences haven’t been indexed

• Contrails indexing of conferences at the paper/presentation level has been wildly successful

• There could be close to 10,000,000 unindexed papers held by NTIS

Information Advocate

• NTIS could take the lead in ensuring public availability of federally funded information– Work with DTIC to remedy their

suppression of technical reports that have been announced as publicly available

– Identify similar problems at other agencies and work with them as well

Information Advocate

• Work to release technical information from the various “Sensitive but Unclassified” distribution limitations invented to get around EO 10901

• Time to step back down off the Soap Box

Contrails Value Added

• Comparing Contrails to DTIC Online– Public can request digitization– Scans from paper instead of microfiche

• Photographs in grayscale

– Improved handling of foldout pages– Better resolution coupled with lower file

size– Paper level indexing of conferences

Moving Forward

• Issues– May need to migrate website from an ASP

model hosted on a Windows server– Would like to integrate the aesthetic with

the new library and university website redesign

– Lost access to DTIC Online Access Controlled

Moving Forward

• Opportunities– Split off historical resources from technical

reports– Streamline indexing of reports and allow

full-text web searching to augment our website

– Accelerate digitization efforts

Thank you report donors!

• Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control

• Air Force Research Laboratory

• University of Cincinnati

• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

• Royal Air Force Centre for Aerospace Medicine

• Bombardier