Developing the scientific-technical Digital Library at a National Laboratory

Abstract

The NRL Library is well on the way to providing its research community with access to a “digital library.” Through its InfoNet Campus-Wide Information System it provides researchers with menu- driven desktop access to a large number of local and remote information resources. With its Research Reports Imaging System the Library turned its online reports catalog into an information retrieval tool instead of a pointer, enabling the user to view entire documents online or print them on demand. When completed, TORPEDO will combine the capabilities of both; through the use of powerful search and retrieval tools, it will disseminate electronic images, enabling end users seated at their computers or workstations to search, view and print the contents of large collections of library materials. The system, consisting of a Mosaic front end and a commercial imaging/indexing system, will be accessible via the campus network and the Internet.

TORPEDO is being designed for expansion and will permit the addition of multiple scanning subsystems and optical storage juke box devices. The initial system will permit NRL campus access to the information using the SUN workstation and associated optical storage hardware and software. The SUN will provide magnetic storage for the Excalibur text database and will host the Mosaic software and the Excalibur retrieval engine. Initially TORPEDO will handle one million image pages which will occupy roughly 60GB of optical disk storage.