I am pleased to have the opportunity to address this Consultative Meeting of INIS Liaison Officers on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the founding of the International Nuclear Information System.
In the middle 1960 s a number of IAEA Member States suggested that it would be in the interest of all countries to establish an international system to provide information on all peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.
The efforts of many experts from Member States and the IAEA Secretariat resulted in the design of a system with the mission of ... producing and disseminating in a decentralized manner a computer-based bibliographic database on all the peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology and to collect and make available the full-text of those items not readily available through normal commercial channels .
In May 1970 the first electronic and printed products of this system were distributed to Member States of the Agency. INIS, as a co-operative programme between the Secretariat at the IAEA and the participating Member States, was established. It has proved through the years to be one of the most effective tools for the exchange of information relating to the peaceful uses of atomic energy.
The novel feature of INIS was its system for the collection and distribution of data. All participating centres, including those of industrialized countries, have been benefiting from the co-operation since they could stop processing literature published outside their national boundaries (thus eliminating costs involved). Developing countries in particular have been encouraged by their participation in INIS to enhance their national infrastructures for the collection and handling of domestic nuclear literature
Because of the nature of INIS, a close co-operation was maintained between the national centres and INIS headquarters at the IAEA through the efforts of the government- appointed INIS Liaison Officers. Over the past 25 years, INIS operations have depended on the contributions from participating Member States and international organizations, not only in the expansion of the database, but in ensuring that the system remained responsive to the changing needs for nuclear information as well as to the changing technologies for information dissemination.
At the time of its establishment, the INIS system was deemed to be at the forefront of the then existing information technology; during the intervening 25 years it has steadily developed so as to maintain its position in the vanguard of information systems, while maintaining its non-commercial character and facilitating the availability of nuclear information to users in all participating countries irrespective of their levels of development.
In recalling some of the major milestones in the development of INIS, let me just mention the adoption of controlled terminology for identifying the subject content of documents in 1971, the introduction of abstracts in machine-readable form in 1975, the availability of the database online from the Agency s computer - on an experimental basis in 1977 and on a regular basis in 1985, the availability of the database on CD-ROM in 1991, the expansion of the scope of the system to cover, for comparison purposes, the environmen- tal and economic aspects of non-nuclear energy sources in 1992, and, most recently, the routine receipt of input to the system by electronic mail in 1993.
INIS covers all peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology. This means that INIS continues to play a key role in providing access to nuclear information to support nuclear projects worldwide. It covers specifically nuclear safety and radiation protection, safeguards, environmental effects of nuclear compared to other energy sources, and applica- tions of nuclear techniques in areas such as food preservation and agriculture, human health, industry and earth sciences, and physical and chemical sciences.
The number of IAEA Member States participating in INIS has grown to 90 together with 17 international organizations, and the database they have created now has records referring to over 1.8 million items of nuclear literature and is growing at the rate of about 85 thousand records per year. This makes it by far the largest electronic database of the IAEA designed for Member State use.
You are all aware of the fact that, besides creating an international database for nuclear science and technology, INIS has played an important role as a model for other international systems - such as the AGRIS system of FAO. Many of its formats, standards, rules, guidelines, and recently some of the software it has developed, have been adapted or have formed the basis for similar entities in other systems or information services.
The Review and Extension Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was concluded in New York only last week. In my address to the Review Conference, I stressed that the Non-Proliferation Treaty, through its Article IV, places an obligation on all Parties to the Treaty to facilitate the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information. The Agency has been the principal multilateral instrument for giving effect to this commitment. An important part of these activities occur within the framework of the Agency s Technical Co- operation Programmes. The transfer of nuclear information has been based in a large measure on INIS services which, in turn, have been supported by a number of national and regional co-operative arrangements.
The world of nuclear information exchange has undergone substantial changes since INIS was founded. Financial constraints have become more severe in recent years both for the IAEA and for many of the national organizations responsible for INIS activities. This has led to efforts aimed at identifying priorities for collecting and disseminating information, optimizing operations and seeking more cost-effective methods for providing nuclear information. Parallel with this, there have been the explosive developments of Information Technology and the resulting search for ways to use these developments to achieve effective distribution of information at lower costs.
During the past three years a number of tasks have been implemented by the INIS Secretariat in co-operation with the Member States:
- an extensive study on User Needs was conducted in 57 Member States and 6 international organizations - a report on this study is being made available at this meeting;
- a PC software package called FIBRE was developed and has become the basic tool for input preparation in 53 countries;
- optical disk technology for the storage and dissemination of full text of non- conventional literature is in the implementation process;
- a PC-based training package is under development to increase the efficiency of the INIS training programme, in particular to enhance staff skills at national centres in developing Member States;
- a detailed review of current trends in Information Technology and the assessment of their implications on INIS operations has been undertaken.
For the future, INIS will need to continue to upgrade its technical capacities. It will also need to ensure that it meets the priority information needs of Member States irrespective of their level of development. To these ends the INIS Secretariat together with its co- operating Member States has launched an action plan for strategic developments of the system for the years 1995 to 2000 and beyond. I understand that the discussion of this action plan is an important item on the agenda of the present meeting and urge that you give it serious attention. The INIS service costs some $5 million per year and it is vital that all Member States can make good use of it.
On this occasion it is essential to recognize that what has been achieved over the past 25 years is due to the active participation of IAEA Member States, the participating International Organizations and the INIS Secretariat.
The presence here today of delegates from 68 countries is an indication of the importance of the INIS programme to the respective Member Sates. A number of keynote speakers invited on this occasion will also highlight some of the past milestones of INIS, as well as providing insights into some national plans for nuclear information programmes and the opportunities offered by recent developments in information technology.
I wish to assure the national INIS Liaison Officers of the importance that the IAEA attaches to the information exchange on the peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology. Let us work together to ensure that INIS will continue to be an effective tool for this information exchange and that users of nuclear information throughout the world will find easy access to it through the products and services offered by the system. Our efforts in this co-operative endeavour surely bring us closer to the realization of the basic objective of the IAEA as defined in Article II of its Statute: "To seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world".