Case Study
Energy – Oil Shale Information
Author: Lisa S. Nickum
Posted: May 1, 2007
Updated: May 7, 2008
This case study will help with using various databases provided from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and Technology website.
Scenario – With a new found interest in the prospect of energy from oil shale, a user wants to do some research on the industry. He wants to find any information on the industry’s history, information on any environmental and health effects of recovering/processing oil shale, as well as any new technologies (from the 1990s forward) for processing oil shale. The user informs you that during the 1970s and 1980s, there was great interest in oil shale in the
1) Since the mission of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) within the Department of Energy (DOE) is to make accessible the research and development findings to researchers and the American public, the OSTI website (http://www.osti.gov/index.html) is a good place to start.
2) There are many different links to website and databases from this OSTI website.
3) The most comprehensive are the Energy Citations Database and the
a. Both contain Department of Energy technical reports.
b. Energy Citations Database covers the DOE and its predecessors from 1948 to the present – possibly a good source for the user’s wish to examine information from the 1970s forward.
c.
4) Start with the Energy Citations Database (http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/) to find information.
a. Remember that this is a large database containing research and development technical reports.
b. Broad subject searching, even a search using oil shale (over 5,000 hits), will bring back many results.
c. A more precise search like oil shale health effects will return significantly fewer results (under 150).
d. Search the database to try to find information for the user above.
i. Try both the basic and advanced searches.
ii. Explore the various fields available in the advanced search to see which provides the best results.
iii. Examine a bibliographic record to see what it contains.
e. The majority of results you receive will not link to full-text, so you may need to refer the user to another library. Remember that some libraries have technical report collections, especially academic research libraries, but very few of these libraries have cataloged their technical report collections.
5) Try the
a. This is a full-text database so one needs to be even more aware of search terms used.
b. Try both the basic and fielded searches.
c. Explore the various fields in the fielded search.
i. Try the search “oil shale technology” in the fields where it makes sense (i.e., full text or titles not author or identifier numbers).
ii. See the difference in the results (from more than 5000 hits down to under 10 hits).
d. Notice that there are some reports available in full-text published well before the 1990s – the DOE is continuing to provide full-text access to an increasing amount of their collection.
e. Look at Oil shale technology. Final report
i. This report is from 1995 and might help the patron with finding newer technologies in the oil shale industry
ii. Look at the entire full-text report as well as individual pages.
f. The
i. Based on saved search criteria.
ii. User must register and create a password.
iii. Registration and password will expire 6 months after creation, but user can create a new password if he/she wants to continue getting the alerts.
6) Two other sources of information available from the OSTI website are Gray Lit Network and Science.gov. While there will undoubtedly be overlap in some results with the other two databases already searched, there will be unique records found in these databases.
7) Go to the Science Accelerator website (http://www.scienceaccelerator.gov/)
a. This site “searches science, including R&D results, project descriptions, accomplishments, and more, via resources made available by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), U.S. Department of Energy.” Perform a search on the broad term oil shale.
i. It is obvious that this search brings up useful results not seen in the previous two DOE databases.
ii. Go into a couple of records for a DOE resource OTHER than Energy Citations Database or
1. See what kinds of information are available from the different sources.
2. Compare the kind if information you found in this search to previous searches within the Energy Citations Database and
b. Search the database with additional terms used in the previous searches to see if you can find more unique results.
8) Go to the Science.gov website (http://www.science.gov/index.html)
a. This website links to Federal scientific reports and projects from many participating agencies (see http://www.science.gov/participatingagencies.html).
b. The website is arranged by topic.
c. Select the Energy & Energy Conservation link.
d. The websites are listed alphabetically, but one can also search the entire Science.gov site (basic and advanced).
e. Perform a broad search on “oil shale”
f. See how many results come from agencies other than those examined before (i.e., Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, and National Aeronautical and Space Administration).
i. The results page indicates the source of the information at the end of the brief record.
ii. There are results from the U.S. Geological Survey National Biological Information Infrastructure and the PubMed that could provide information to the user on environmental effects.
g. Results from agencies other than those listed above makes searching Science.gov worthwhile.
h. Try performing searches used in the databases above to compare the results.
i. Once again, you can inform the user that a free alert service is available.
