ON a recent Govdoc-l thread about searching for technical reports (which I *love* as a member of the TRAIL network!), someone mentioned the OpenNet database. I hadn’t heard of this resource, so went searching. Turns out that OpenNet is a database of declassified documents and records from the Department of Energy, very handy for technical and scientific information. Here’s how they describe it:
The OpenNet database provides easy, timely access to over 485,000 bibliographic references and 140,000 recently declassified documents, including information declassified in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. In addition to these documents, OpenNet references older document collections from several DOE sources. This database is updated regularly as more information becomes available.
Well, that piqued my interest, since I thought my library might get OpenNet documents into our catalog as part of OSTI’s MARC records batch downloads of ScitechConnect materials. I contacted OSTI to see and here’s the response I got:
Technically, OpenNet is not an OSTI resource. OSTI produces the product on contract for the DOE Office of History and Heritage Resources. OSTI’s products contain scientific and technical information and OpenNet’s content is declassified material. There is some overlap between the two. If an STI report was initially classified and later declassified, it should appear in both. However, there is a lot of correspondence, notes, and other “unpublished” stuff in OpenNet and some of it might contain STI that won’t appear in SciTech Connect due to the format of the material. So there are declassified reports that appear in both databases and will have MARC records. The majority of the OpenNet records are not considered STI and will not be in SciTech Connect and have MARC records.
So there you have it. I recommend that all libraries catalog OpenNet for their databases pages!
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