Donating Items to the Library

Departing? Spring cleaning? If you have books, conference proceedings, or other publications you would like to donate to the library, please contact boulderlabs.ref@noaa.gov to make arrangements with a librarian. Items left in the Branch Library without contacting the library first will be discarded.

Please note we cannot accept multimedia donations.

Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) Webinar: Wednesday, May 14th 10am

Image Credit: FASEB (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology)

A persistent identifier is a long-lasting reference to a digital resource that makes it easily locatable across different platforms. Examples of PIDS include: ORCID, Digital Object Identifiers (DOI), and the Research Organization Registry (ROR).

As a researcher, PIDs ensure your work is easily findable, accessible, and reusable by others. PIDs also help with accurate citation, attribution, and tracking of research outputs and impacts.

Interested in learning more? Join the NOAA Library for a webinar on PIDs next Wednesday, May 14th at 10am MST. Register here.

Note: although the primary audience is NOAA, all DOC employees can attend. The information presented will be applicable to all researchers.

Learn more about PIDs

Instats/ASA Offer Free Training for Government Employees

Instats, in partnership with the American Statistical Association (ASA), is offering all government employees with a .gov email address free access to Instats' premier streaming library of expert-led research training content— over 200 courses, with thousands of hours of content – free of charge.

Instats' comprehensive library covers a range of topics from statistics and data science to advanced quantitative and qualitative research methods. By democratizing access to high-quality training, Instats is investing in the continuous professional development of those who serve our communities. Eligible government professionals can sign up at instats.org using their official .gov email to unlock this resource.

Blast from the Stacks:

Exploring WWII Naval Radar Technology

Blast from the Stacks highlights rare, intriguing, and historical items from the Boulder Labs Library physical collections. Visit the Main Library to check out some WWII era publications on Naval radar technology – featuring two documents that were originally classified upon publication.

Radar Screen Image of North Sea and German Coast (1944). Credit: National WWII Museum Digital Collection

Our latest installment of Blast from the Stacks highlights the considerable radar (radio detection and ranging) technology breakthroughs that the U.S. military and other Allies utilized to help secure victory in the second World War.

Radar Electronic Fundamentals, from the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships, was published in 1944 as a restricted document. It features a wealth of schematics and diagrams, making it a visually appealing artifact of vintage military history.

Image Credit: Radar Electronic Fundamentals (1944)

Another fascinating relic to examine alongside this electronics manual, if for no other reason than every single one of its pages “secret” and “classified” notations have been marked out by hand, is The Summary Technical Report of NDRC [National Defense Research Committee] Division 14. First published in 1946, this tech report wasn’t declassified until 1958. It not only covers military aircraft operations, radar equipment, and radar detection in extensive detail, it also describes the intriguing early history of the High-Altitude Research Program (HARP). A joint venture between the United States and Canada, HARP used sizable cannons placed in strategic locations to fire projectiles into the sky. While the program never achieved its ultimate goal – to develop a gun capable of firing into space – it did provide upper atmosphere and ballistic reentry data that remained valuable long after the program was disbanded in 1967.

The need for rigorous research on radar continues to this day, as new forms of radar are introduced for applications such as intelligent transportation. NTIA leads the national conversation on this topic in its role as Federal spectrum manager. Since the 1940s, NTIA's Institute for Telecommunication Sciences and its predecessor labs have been at the vanguard of exploring spectrum coexistence between radars and non-radar systems. ITS’s former senior technical fellow Frank Sanders, lead author of the 2024 NTIA Case Study: Adjacent-Band Coexistence Between 5G Base Station Transmitters and Air Traffic Control Radar Receivers delivered a plenary talk at the 2024 IEEE Radar Conference (now available on YouTube). To quote Sanders: “Of all the radio system types that occupy the electromagnetic spectrum, perhaps none are so important while also being so generally misunderstood, even within technical communities, as radars. Radar technology, the revolutionary innovation that the Allies leveraged to win the Second World War, gained a notoriety and reputation for mystery and secrecy in those years that it has never entirely shaken.”

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