Today, TORPEDO Ultra v2.5.0 is the Ruth H. Hooker Research Library’s upgraded retrieval system for searching NRL’s locally loaded Digital Library. This powerful new version of the TORPEDO Ultra system currently allows searching across millions of full text articles from several publishers and additional publication are continually added on a regular basis. There are a total of 11,154,772 documents covering 91,022,939 pages currently in the digital library repository.
Background
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) operates as the Navy’s full-spectrum corporate laboratory, conducting a broadly-based multidisciplinary program of scientific research and advanced technological development. Research is conducted toward maritime applications of new and improved materials, techniques, equipment, systems and ocean, atmospheric, space sciences and related technologies. The Ruth H. Hooker Research Library offers a full range of traditional and digital library resources to enhance and support the research programs of NRL and Office of Naval Research.
Solution
PTFS developed a digital library and online portal, known as The Optical Retrieval Project Electronic Documents Online (TORPEDO), for NRL beginning in 1995, and has supported ongoing functional enhancements to the digital library, as well as content expansion, for the past fifteen years. The project started with a goal to share and network a collection of CD-ROM databases for the NRL research community. PTFS developed a solution around a commercial repository application called EFS from Excalibur Technologies.
In 1995, traditional web browsers as we’re accustomed to today did not exist, so PTFS deployed EFS at a desk top level to network approximately 5,000 NRL employees and contract staff. In parallel with developing the repository, PTFS digitized 60,000 technical reports (3.3M pages) into image/text PDF’s. PTFS also created an online portal called Infonet to serve as an interface to the repository.
Once the Web Browser became a stable platform for digital library development, the NRL solution was ported for use with the NCA Mosaic Web browser. TORPEDO was based on Convera’s RetrievalWare search engine product. Infonet was also migrated to a web based environment and renamed InfoWeb.
PTFS’s staff currently performs on-site support for a variety of tasks at the NRL library. PTFS staff has included senior and expert systems engineers, computer programmers, database administrators, library technicians, scanning technicians, web designers, and computer operators. This contract has been renewed each year since 1995.
Benefits
- Smooth integration of new data feeds.
- Nearly half of the TORPEDO files were converted from large TIFFs to more manageable PDFs, enhancing searching capabilities and limiting file space requirements.
- Greatly reduced time between content creation and posting to TORPEDO Library. Enhanced security to ensure authorized access to content.
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