SCIENCE

WASHINGTON, DC -- In its quest to become the preferred provider of scientific and technical information for the Naval research community, the Ruth H. Hooker Research Library at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) will soon launch an updated version of its online digital library, introducing users to expanded search capabilities, a revamped user interface and desktop access to hundreds of new publications. The latest version of NRL's TORPEDO Ultra digital library will continue to be powered by Convera's RetrievalWare, a text content management solution adopted by the NRL Library over four years ago. The current version of TORPEDO ("The Optical Retrieval Project: Electronic Documents Online"), also supported by RetrievalWare, provides authorized users and sites with an intuitive, convenient way to search and browse journal and technical report content via the Web, whether in the office, at home or on travel. The TORPEDO Ultra interface enables fielded searching as well as full text concept searching, the ability to restrict searches to specific collections (e.g. subject groupings or selected titles), and superior display and print capabilities through the use of PDF documents. TORPEDO Ultra Version 2, due to be launched later this summer, will rely on RetrievalWare to handle the indexing, search and retrieval of the 600 new journals that will be added to the site in the next year. In all, RetrievalWare will manage over one terabyte of data, equivalent to over four million PDF pages. Over 3,000 NRL employees, located at four sites, will have access to the full content of 6,000 technical journals, 2,000 NRL press releases dating back to 1968, 10,000 NRL-authored articles and conference papers dating back to 1944, and nearly one million articles from over 800 journals. Content available through the library focuses primarily upon research pertaining to physics, chemistry, electronics and space sciences. In addition to handling an ever-expanding base of content, Convera's RetrievalWare will allow further customization to the site, including a new interface which will enable users to conduct "More Like This" searches and an on-the-fly author search from either browse mode or from a search hit list. TORPEDO Ultra Version 2 will also provide the ability to view bibliographic records for both citing and cited articles through integration with the Institute for Scientific Information's Web of Science, also loaded locally at NRL. "Convera's RetrievalWare provides our users with powerful concept searching capabilities and intelligent access to a vast repository of documents," said James King, Specialist in Library Information Technology, Naval Research Laboratory. "RetrievalWare is also extremely scalable, enabling us to significantly expand our library offerings." "In speaking with our customers, we have found that both government and corporate entities are challenged by the growing number and complexity of file formats used to store their digital content," said Ben Plummer, senior vice president, marketing, Convera. "These organizations are increasingly looking for a single source provider of digital content management solutions that address the archiving, searching and management of text, image and video-based content. Convera's products excels at managing these diverse enterprise assets so they can be found and retrieved in an efficient and systematic way." Among Convera's other government customers are the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Food and Drug Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Joints Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Technology Information Network, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Sandia National Labs, the Social Security Administration, the US Army, US Air Force, US Department of Justice, US Department of State, US Geological Survey and US Navy. For more information visit www.convera.com