VICKSBURG, Miss. – The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) library is the first in the Department of Defense (DoD) to take part in a partnership with Google Books – a digital database that contains the full text of books, magazines and other printed material, allowing the user easy accessibility to information on the topic of interest.
Because of this partnership, the amount of information and research that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and ERDC currently have available online will quadruple.
“Google Books is one of the most widely used free academic search engines available, and the predicted rise in number of views for USACE and ERDC technical reports will increase the dissemination and value of our work in the research world,” said David Horner, former director of ERDC’s Information Technology Lab (ITL). “This represents a major step forward in sharing our story.”
Joycelynn Brooks, ERDC librarian and Google project lead, said it is an honor to be the first library in the DoD and USACE to be selected for this project.
“We are the largest science and technology library in the Army, with more than 300,000 physical items and a large digital collection,” said Brooks. “Our mission is to make sure all of ERDC’s science and technology knowledge is expertly created, curated and widely available.”
Google has scanned government documents from USACE and ERDC prior to this Google Books partnership, but it wasn’t until Army librarian, Mike McNulty, was approached by Google regarding data from a mosquito repellant study, that the opportunity for a partnership began to emerge.
“This conversation led to identifying a gap in Google Books when it came to the Army’s technical knowledge,” said Brooks. “There are about 100,000 items that have not been scanned in our 3 libraries – decades of research that is not yet available online.”
The ERDC library is divided into three locations in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Hanover, New Hampshire, and Champaign, Illinois. Google selected ERDC as a starting point for the scanning project, which began in February and will continue throughout the rest of the year, because of its large collections and staff.
“The library staff are working diligently on this project, and it is taking everyone working together as a team to meet our timelines,” said Molly McManus, chief of the Information Science and Knowledge Management Branch.
Google provided 80 large carts for packing and shipping books and a list of preferred items to be digitized, and the library staff has been loading 40 carts of books at a time and shipping them to Google’s scan center.
It takes about eight weeks or less to complete the scanning process and when the carts return to ERDC, the staff then begins the process of scanning the titles back into the library’s collection and returning them to the shelves.
McManus said that this project is not just about visibility of the digital reports but that it will also lead to further ERDC research.
“ERDC will receive text files of each item scanned which will open opportunities for working with ERDC’s data scientists on artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said McManus.
After being scanned, items in the public domain are fully accessible not only on Google Books but also on ERDC’s digital repository, ERDC Knowledge Core, which will provide long term preservation for the digital materials.
“It is an honor to be able to say the ERDC Library is part of ITL,” said Horner. “This partnership with Google Books will increase the visibility of our organization’s research, which will lead to greater awareness of our value, new opportunities for collaboration, and expanded avenues for aiding the DoD and our nation.”