Facing future users - the challenge of transforming a traditional online database into a Web service

The Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDE) agreement included 19 member countries spanning four continents: Japan and the Republic of Korea; Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; Canada, Mexico, and the United States; and Brazil. The participating countries share their nationally published energy research and technology information, as an agreement under the International Energy Agency (IEA). The concrete result of this agreement is the ETDE-Energy Database. This paper first outlines the building of the database; financial problems; and results of users surveys indicating that, during the 1990s, there has been a decrease among academic users and an overall decline in both the hours of use and the total amount of retrieved information. Discussion then focuses on the new cost-effective Web service developed for information exchange, followed by the evaluation of four metadata formats. It was agreed to wait and see the results of a United States experiment using the Dublin Core metadata format and its impact on the ETDE Database before making an international decision. (AEF) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY