NUCLiB – The virtual nuclear engineering library on the Internet

Abstract

The majority of publications in the field of nuclear engineering appear as reports and are therefore classed as grey literature. They are not usually available in bookshops and in general can only be obtained directly from the publishing institution. To the best of our knowledge, indexed collections do not exist in Germany. The libraries of both research centres in Jülich and Karlsruhe have been building up collections of primary and secondary literature within the field of nuclear technology and related sub-disciplines, as well as related subject areas, for decades. In order to help maintain competence in nuclear engineering, they are currently developing a virtual nuclear engineering portal, NUCLiB (Nuclear Library), which they will use to make a unique repository of full texts available to science, research and practical applications in the future. The reports are successively digitized and after optical character recognition is performed, they are then automatically indexed with metadata. This objective indexing will allow scientists and technicians to search through and make use of the collections. Furthermore, a sophisticated portal with all of the modern functions will be developed and made available. A demo version of the portal can be accessed online at www.nuclib.de.