Control and supply of technical reports preMAGiC

1
Control and supply of technical reports
(pre-MAGiC)

• Andrew Smith
• Special Materials Access Manager
• The British Library

2
Characteristics

• Haphazard or specialised distribution
• often generated as by-products
• access often restricted
• poor publicity
• poor bibliographic control
• poor availability in libraries

3
How many produced each year?

• Est. c50,000 UK local authority documents
• c70,000 US ST reports US NTIS
• c19,000 UK reports acquired by BL
• c7,500 UK doctoral theses
• c17,000 conferences acquired by BL
• who knows?

4
Who uses them?

• Sector Users Requests
• Academic/HE 1,157 15,231
• Government 693 7,648
• Industrial/Commercial 1,034 8,626
• Public Library/Other 358 2,520
• TOTAL 3,242 34,025
• (recent BLDSC demand survey)

5
Challenges

• perceived low demand
• if its worthwhile it will be published
• not publicised/marketed
• needs effort to track down
• expensive in terms of human resource
• difficult to find a solution

6
Why bother?

• valuable information often never published
• refined/edited versions may appear later, but
• 12-18 months delay is common
• reports frequently at the cutting edge

7
National responses

• US
• NTIS
• DoD Defense Technical Information Center
• NASA
• Dept of Energy
• UK
• Technology Reports Centre
• Defence Research Information Centre
• Public Record Office
• The British Library

8
International responses

• Energy Technology Data Exchange
• International Nuclear Information System
• ESA European Aerospace Database
• System for Information on Grey Literature in
  Europe

9
BL holdings

• British - National Reports Collection
• more than 240,000 held 1980-
• c19,000 acquired each year
• from more than 4,000 sources
• a national and corporate resource
• Information on holdings
• web - blpc
• SIGLE database (web/online/CD-ROM)
• British National Bibliography for Report
  Literature (formerly British Reports,
  Translations Theses)

10
BL holdings

• US/International - more than 4 million reports
• NTIS from 1940s
• NASA/NACA from 1900s
• DOE/USAEC from 1940s
• DOD from 1940s
• INIS from 1970
• AGARD/NATO RTO from 1950s
• ESA from 1960s
• EC/EU from 1950s
• Information on holdings
• ??

11
Recent developments

• major US sources offering free full text
  download via web
• adoption of Open Archives Initiative for
  metadata harvesting
• hyperlinks from metadata to full text
  order/download options
• Virtual Technical Reports Center (University of
  Maryland)
• engineering portals to networked information
  such as AERADE, EEVL
• BL plans to deliver access electronically
  wherever practicable
• MAGiC - METReS - National Reports Catalogue