Poster

Nucleus: The Authoritative Resource for Scientific and Technical Nuclear Information

Anthony Jay Bull

In 1989, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) undertook a project to map its information architecture. Seventeen years later, one might think that the information model is out-of-date after changes in the world's political situation, the advent of distributed computing, and advances in the world of nuclear information. Contrary to expectations, the model is still fairly accurate but an internal fragmentation of the IAEA's most valuable resource— information—exists and is made evident thanks to the Internet.

To improve the information seeking experience amongst organizational resources, Senior Management at the IAEA accepted a proposal to create a portal for scientific and technical nuclear information. The challenge: provide an integrated web-based information landscape with a single search across 200+ information resources on different platforms across three separate IT operational entities with different registration procedures for each resource.

This Case Study provides a glance into the information and business processes at the organization often referred to as the "UN's nuclear watchdog." In addition, it highlights the lessons learned from creating a web-based repository for the world's scientific and technical nuclear information as they benefit the IA community.