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TRAIL Acknowledgements
TRAIL would like to acknowledge the contributions of the following individuals, organizations, and institutions. If we have missed a contribution of which you are aware, please let us know. Email us at trail@crl.edu
Financial Contributors
- TRAIL Member Institutions
- University of Hong Kong
Content Contributors
| University of Arkansas | University of Arizona | Auburn University |
| Bowdoin College Library | University of California at Davis | University of California at Santa Barbara |
| University of California at Riverside | California Institute of Technology | University of Cincinnati |
| Cleveland Public Library | Colorado School of Mines | Colorado State University |
| University of Connecticut | Dallas Public Library | Denver Public Library |
| Drake University | Evergreen State College | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| University of Illinois | Iowa State University | Johns Hopkins University |
| Kansas State University | Lehigh University | Linda Hall Library |
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Michigan State University |
| National Transportation Library | New Orleans Public Library | University of New Mexico |
| Neilsen Engineering & Research, Inc. | University of Notre Dame | Northwestern University |
| Ohio Northern University | Oklahoma Dept. of Libraries | Oklahoma State University |
| Oregon Health & Science University | Pennsylvania State University | Princeton University |
| Rawlins Public Library | Rice University | Rutgers University |
| San Diego Public Library | San Francisco Public Library | Seattle Public Library |
| Southwestern Research Institute | Stanford University | State University of New York at Stony Brook |
| Texas A & M University | Texas State Library | University of Tulsa |
| USGS Fort Colins Science Center | University of Utah | University of Washington |
| Washington State University | Western Wyoming Community College | University of Wisconsin, Madison |
| University of Wyoming |
Additional Significant Contributors
- University of Arizona - Project idea originator
- Linda Hall Library - Project idea support. Provided technical report scans used in the pilot digitization project.
- Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) - Pilot project sponsorship
- Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - Continued development and support of TRAIL as part of the Global Resources Network
- University of Hawaii at Manoa - Hosting of pilot search interface
- University of Washington - Hosting of TRAIL search interface
- University of North Texas - Acts as one of the Streams receiving documents to be digitized and hosts part of the TRAIL digitized collection
Benefits of TRAIL Membership
Why Join Trail
Your institution becomes associated with a national open access digitization project that is highly visible and successful - one of the best digitization projects around. View current metrics
Member institutions have a voice in current and future plans for TRAIL.
Joining TRAIL provides an opportunity to collaborate and support persistent, sustainable open access to digital technical material.
Represent your Institution's Perspective and Priorities
Institutions may have space needs, user needs, or materials in poor condition that need immediate attention. These needs can be met through digitization efforts. Members on the Steering Committee and Working Groups decide and prioritize what will be digitized.
Gain valuable library space and collection management resources by recommending or donating collections/items to the project for scanning. Shipping cost for donated materials is covered by TRAIL for TRAIL members.
Members can access project working documentation, reports, and collection analysis to aid in collection management decisions for their home libraries.
Content Discovery for your Users
The search interface www.technicalreports.org provides immediate access to digitized content - add this resource to your electronic resource/database list.
Access or Offer Subject Expertise
Members can supply subject expertise, technical assistance, or other in-kind contributions to the program, extending the accrued benefits to all participants. For institutions without such local expertise, members may rely on the expertise of fellow participants to understand the history and background of difficult-to-use print technical report series in their collections.
Professional Development
There are professional development opportunities for librarians through the participation in and support of an open access project.
Opportunities for TRAIL members to get involved:
- contribute, solicit, collect, and organize content before sending to our central processing area
- work on recruitment and training of new members
- develop marketing plans for promotion and communication
- support TRAIL’s social media outreach
- coordinate the collection and distribution of metrics
- develop tools to process and access TRAIL content
- explore grants and other funding opportunities
- opportunities to contribute to LIS professional publications
What can New Members Offer
New members allow us to do more. The economies of scale or cost advantages due to increased membership allows us to advance the work of the project. TRAIL is a membership-supported project.
History of Trail Timeline
2003–Mid-2005
Discussion began at the University of Arizona (UA), followed by meetings at the American Library Association (ALA) and the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) on a possible project to digitize U.S. federal technical reports to make them more visible and searchable. Maliaca Oxnam of UA led these discussions.
A letter of interest was sent to Judy Russell at the Government Printing Office.
The discussion group wanted to create a pilot to explore potential problems and successes of a national, collaborative technical report digitization, access, and preservation project. The demonstration project would be small (less than 500 reports or 50,000 pages), but large enough to identify and work out some technical and user problems.
Maliaca Oxnam started a TECHREPORTS e-list at UA to communicate with other interested parties.
Late 2005
GPO showed interest in the project but had no funding. UA received word that Bernie Reilly at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) was interested in the project. A group from UA met with Bernie, who agreed to gauge the interest of CRL libraries in the project.
The Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) opened discussions on possible new strategic directions. In response, UA submitted a proposal to develop a collaborative project with CRL to identify, digitize, and provide open access to federal technical reports.
A straw poll over the TECHREPORTS list asked subscribers which agencies' reports would attract the most interest.
Early 2006
Maliaca Oxnam and Bernie Reilly talked again at the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Reilly reiterated CRL’s interest in the digitization project. Results of the straw poll were reported.
GWLA announced that the UA proposal had been accepted as one of four strategic initiatives for the Alliance. A small group of GWLA Deans and Directors met to expand each initiative into a program outline and suggest next steps.
Mid-2006
GWLA approved the outline for the technical report digitization project and the GWLA/CRL Federal Technical Reports Task Force was created to move the project forward. At this point the Task Force was primarily composed of engineering librarians. Maliaca Oxnam became Chair of the Task Force.
The institutions represented on the Task Force were:
University of Arizona
University of Arkansas
Center for Research Libraries
University of Colorado, Boulder
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Kansas State University
Linda Hall Library
University of Washington
The Linda Hall Library in Kansas City expressed particular interest in the project and agreed to assign an individual to work on the Task Force as well as to do a 200–500 report digitization test to identify costs.
The University of Arizona agreed to provide seed money for the project; funds were transferred to CRL to avoid fiscal year spending deadlines at UA.
The Task Force met for the first time; over two days, members reviewed the entire project and outlined questions and next steps for each stage. The Task Force also:
- identified next steps that subgroups could work on in the short term
- created a Gantt chart that outlined tasks and timelines
- decided on a number of small collections that could be used for the pilot/demonstration project
- developed preliminary cost model frameworks that were submitted to GWLA/CRL members for feedback.
These efforts were followed by:
- development of interface and metadata requirements
- creation of lists of agencies and institutions with interest in being involved in the project
- investigation of digitization vendors
- scanning of the first collection: the Monograph Series of the National Bureau of Standards.
Late 2006
The Task Force:
- carried out the above projects
- sent out calls for interest on various e-lists
- developed long-term digitization plans
- developed a prototype system at the University of Hawaii
- identified publication of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) collections for scanning.
Early 2007
Task Force members met in January at the Linda Hall Library to continue intensive planning for the pilot and for a longer-phased project. They also developed digitization quality control checks.
AEC collections were scanned and added to the pilot site.
Pilot project was named TRAIL (Technical Report Archive and Image Library).
GWLA Deans and Directors agreed to support the project with $4,000 per GWLA institution (about $120,000 total). GWLA added a Digital Collections Program Officer to its staff, who joined the Task Force as the GWLA representative/liaison.
Mid-2007
The University of Arkansas received a gift of the U.S. Bureau of Mines technical report series, which became the next major set of materials to be digitized. The University of Arkansas became the first “node”.
The University of Michigan Digitization Project (Michigan) offered to become involved. Michigan would funnel the technical reports the Task Force to be included in the project into the stream of materials that Michigan supplies to Google as one of its partners. Michigan would receive a copy of all scanned documents it sends to Google. Development of a separate interface that would allow searching of just the technical-report content was proposed, leading to much discussion between the Task Force and Michigan.
Late 2007
The Task Force met again at the Linda Hall Library to develop a process and workflow for a much larger volume of material, since Michigan had offered to do the scanning. The Task Force was recharged to address a production system (as opposed to a pilot) and added two new members, who were both government documents librarians. The Task Force created and assigned new task lists after this meeting.
Stanford expressed an interest in joining the project to design a user interface to the scanned documents.
The group agreed on a permanent project name—TRAIL—and the name of the group became the TRAIL Task Force.
Early 2008
Discussion began about having OCLC create collection sets of records for each series (or group of series from a particular agency) digitized by the Task Force.
Linda Hall Library bowed out of participation in the project since its commitment was only for the pilot. The Task Force welcomed four new members, three of whom were government documents librarians. The updated version of the Task Force met in Chicago to bring the new members up to speed, decide on future directions, and identify tasks.
The Task Force identified point people and groups to complete these tasks:
The “Collection Group” subgroup would define the collections to be included in the project.
The “External Communication” subgroup would develop a project Web site to inform the public and project partners about the work of the Task Force and how to become involved.
Mid-2008
A skeletal website was launched using free Google space for hosting and creation, and much background work to populate the site with content.
UA developed a project internal tracking system.
The group made a final decision on the TRAIL logo.
Late 2008
Work began at the second “node” to process of all remaining report series of the National Bureau of Standards.
2009
The University of North Texas (UNT) became a partner for hosting TRAIL content. UNT had a strong track record with content hosting and digital projects with the Government Printing Office and was very familiar with the unique needs of the technical report literature. The University of Washington initiated to develop the web interface and federated search between UNT and the Hathi Repository.
Early 2010
TRAIL won the ALA/GODORT/LexisNexis Documents to the People Award. The Award “is a tribute to an individual, library, institution, or other non-commercial group that has most effectively encouraged the use of government documents in support of library service.”
In the spring of 2010, TRAIL became part of the Global Resource Network (GRN) within CRL. A new administrative structure was formed, bylaws were created and a funding structure established. TRAIL began soliciting institutional members who would provide support via a membership fee and also be willing to assist with the work of TRAIL.
Late 2010
The latter half of 2010 saw the creation and initiation of an orientation program for new members, increased participation in TRAIL from new member institution representatives, and the release and rollout of the new TRAIL search interface.
Early 2011
In spring of 2011, the first election of officers within TRAIL's new organizational structure occurred. The new officers began planning how to build an expanded member base as a Global Resource Network within CRL. A membership working group was formed to actively solicit new TRAIL members
Late 2011
The membership working group met with modest success as TRAIL's institutional member total finally eclipsed in 2011 what it had been when it was a GWLA initiative. The TRAIL Steering Committee determined that a major bylaws revision was needed, and a small task group was formed to draft a reworking of TRAIL's bylaws. 2011 also saw a significant push to increase content available in TRAIL. A pilot to digitize microfiche and microcards was begun at the University of North Texas.
2012
TRAIL’s new bylaws were approved. The retirement of the primary TRAIL cataloger caused a disruption in content processing. The first significant adjustment to the composition of the TRAIL Steering Committee occurred after the bylaws went into effect. The pilot project to digitize microcards and fiche was successful, and 174 reports were added to the TRAIL collection consisting of 14,207 pages of content as a result of that pilot at the University of North Texas.
2013
TRAIL search widget created by staff at Iowa State. In an effort to boost membership, a new Membership Working Group was created, and new members were solicited.
2014
The next significant bylaws revision, which allows for personal memberships within TRAIL (in addition to the standard institutional/organizational variety) was passed by the TRAIL membership. Although the pre-1976 focus for TRAIL content had not been a priority for years, at this point TRAIL dropped that focus completely.
2015
TRAIL began to look more strategically and closely at harvesting content from other sites, including costs for metadata creation and/or clean-up when necessary. TRAIL content at UNT crested 1,000,000 pages. Overall number of TRAIL reports surpassed 50,000. TRAIL was in the top 25 of content suppliers to the Hathi Trust. The first non-educational institution became a member when the Government Publications Office joins TRAIL.
2016
Number of TRAIL institutional members surpassed 40 for the first time.
2016 marked the 10th anniversary of TRAIL, recognized as the “10 Years of TRAIL” promotion.
By February 2016, TRAIL deposited over 39,000 volumes in HathiTrust. This placed TRAIL in the Top 25 of HathiTrust content contributors. Most top-rated contributors are universities, with notable exceptions being the Library of Congress, Getty Research Institute, and TRAIL.
TRAIL completed the digitization of Research and Development Progress Reports issued by the Office of Saline Waters (1955-1972). These technical reports are valuable for the study of thermodynamics, engineering, economics, and water resource policy.
2017
TRAIL has made over 61,500 federal technical reports discoverable and searchable.
2017-2018
First pilot of microcard digitization began with 1,700 cards.
2018
Instructions for how to download TRAIL MARC records created: https://trailguides.crl.edu/series/marc.
TRAIL reached 50 institutional members.
2019
At the TRAIL Annual Meeting at the University of North Texas, the second pilot microcard digitization pilot is approved to proceed as a project. Two vendors digitized 1,000 cards.
2020
The first Fall Member Information Session was held in December. These meetings are designed to provide members with updates from the Steering Committee on the outcomes from the TRAIL Annual Meeting.
The inaugural Metrics page debuts in March. Usage data is updated every six months.
In March, TRAIL distributed its first quarterly newsletter issue to members.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic-related travel and meeting restrictions, the annual meeting in May was held virtually. Most of the sessions had about 40 attendees.
The pandemic affected other areas of the operations of TRAIL:
- HathiTrust's Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS) allowed more users to access TRAIL documents
- The University of Arizona processing was curtailed. The staff working on TRAIL reports started to catalog records for the 1,000 microcard reports during the Spring semester.
- The Google Scanning Center closed because of the pandemic, meaning much of TRAIL’s print digitization stopped.
- The University of Arizona shipped to the University of North Texas about 600 pounds or 51,000 microcards from the Atomic Energy Commission; this was equivalent to 33,000 reports.
- In November, the first ten boxes of cards for the microcard project were delivered to the digitization vendor.
2021
A creative video was made to virtually celebrate TRAIL's 15 years of existence: Watch it here
UNT DL staff began processing microcard image files received from the vendor in February. Microcard digitization was completed by the vendor in August.
The TRAIL Annual Meeting was held virtually again.
Late in the year the Google Scanning Center reopened, and processing of TRAIL materials resumed.
The Collections Working Group initiated the Gap Fill Project to fill in missing documents from series already digitized.
2022
With the Google Scanning Center now re-opened, TRAIL content is again flowing into the HathiTrust DL. However, because of the huge backlog of material for the Google Scanning Center to process (including 120 boxes of material from TRAIL) it will be well into 2023 before all of the TRAIL material will be added to the HathiTrust Digital Library.
UNT DL staff continued the years-long processing of microcard images, while metadata creation began on those reports at Arizona and two other sites (Stanford and UIUC).
2023
A hybrid TRAIL annual meeting was held, hosted both virtually and in person by the University of Iowa.
Microcard image processing and metadata creation continued, resulting in more microcard reports becoming available for users to find in TRAIL.
Steering assessed members interactions with TRAIL and implemented responses in their decisions.
2024
Harvard University hosted the TRAIL annual meeting, both in person and virtually.
The Steering Committee approved a new position within the Communications Working Group, a Marketing Coordinator. This position serves as a member of Steering and will organize marketing activities and outreach efforts for TRAIL. The first activity was exhibiting at the CORE Forum – ALA’s newest division, Core: Leadership, Infrastructures, Futures.
Changes at the University of Michigan and the Google Scanning Center have altered the workflow and timeline to shipping documents. Now a once-a-year delivery will be made in the Fall filling about 80 boxes instead of the usual 40.
UNT has completed the Microcard Project. Cataloging the documents is still ongoing and spearheaded by the Processing Working Group.
TRAIL gained five new and one organizational members in addition to two personal members for a total of 61 current members.
TRAIL Guides
Series information can be found on our Series Processing Inventories Guide.
This guide also lists information on the reports we need in order to complete our work on various series.
TRAIL Search Interface
The TRAIL Search Interface is the free search engine for finding TRAIL digitized content: http://www.technicalreports.org/trail/search/.
Please feel free to add this link to any guides, webpages, or instructional material where it would be useful.
TRAIL Widget
The TRAIL widget is a search box that can be added to your LibGuides or webpages allowing users to search the TRAIL archive easily. It brings the search interface to your users!
Librarians using Springshare’s LibGuides software are familiar with the availability of many search widgets and the customization features available.
Example of the TRAIL Widget used in a Technical Report LibGuide at Iowa State University.
The TRAIL Widget Code can be found on the right side of the TRAIL LibGuide.
If you need technical assistance regarding this widget, email TRAIL.
Infographics
Brochures
These brochures highlight the importance of technical reports and highlight TRAIL tools to access reports. The brochures contain the same content, but one has more color and the other has less color, and is therefore cheaper to print. Designed to help TRAIL libraries spread the word among library staff, research and teaching faculty, students, and others as an introduction to TRAIL, as well as to opportunities to participate in TRAIL.
Social Media
| Facebook Image 1 | Instagram Image 1 | X Image 1 |
| Facebook Image 2 | Instagram Image 2 | X Image 2 |
| Facebook Image 3 | Instagram Image 3 | X Image 3 |
Sample text for social media:
- Get free full-text access to U.S. government technical reports from over 20 different agencies. Learn more about TRAIL at www.crl.edu/programs/trail
- Technical Report Archive & Image Library (TRAIL), an initiative to provide free full-text digital access to federal technical reports. www.crl.edu/programs/trail
- Over 100,000 U.S. government agency technical reports all openly accessible from a single source at www.technicalreports.org.
- The mission of TRAIL is to ensure preservation, discoverability, and persistent open access to U.S. government technical publications regardless of form or format.
Don't forget to link to our social media outlets for updates from TRAIL
Logos
Use TRAIL logos to promote TRAIL in your local institution's social media announcements, newsletters, and more.
TRAIL@15
In 2021, TRAIL celebrated fifteen years of preserving technical reports and making them accessible. Here is the video and logo from that year.
TRAIL Glossary
This glossary was created to explain terms and concepts used by TRAIL. It is intended as an explanatory guide for current and potential members.
Agency: A specific entity of the United States Government as defined by the United States Government Manual
Central Processing Unit: The group that receives reports for digitization, creates inventories, creates an OCLC record for each technical report, and ships reports for digitization.
Content Contributors: Institution(s) providing technical reports. A Content Contributor’s responsibilities include creating ashipping list of the reports, taking the necessary steps to have the reports removed from their collections, and shipping the reports.
Member Organization: Any organization interested in supporting the work of TRAIL that has submitted a signed member agreement and has paid the annual membership fee.
Member Representatives: The person designated by the Member Organization to have voting authority in elections, bylaw revisions and other governance issues. This person is responsible for being the primary contact between TRAIL and the Member Organization. The Member Representative may also elect to participate in TRAIL activities such as standing for elected offices and serving on the Steering Committee, working groups and/or task forces. This person must be employed by the Member Organization and not be a student.
Member Participants: The employees of a Member Organization participating in TRAIL project activities. Member Participants, other than the Member Representative, do not have voting authority, but can participate in all other TRAIL activities.
Node: An institution responsible for soliciting and collecting from Content Contributors a copy of reports in a series to form a collection to be digitized. The Node ships them to the Central Processing Unit.
Personal Members: Personal Members are individuals who are interested in supporting TRAIL, but work at non-member institutions. Personal Members do not pay a yearly membership fee and are encouraged to participate in TRAIL’s Working Groups and activities. The TRAIL Bylaws were amended to include Personal Members in 2015.
Series: A defined publication with a unique SuDoc call number that is numbered or unnumbered.
Note: Title changes without SuDoc changes do not constitute a new series.
Streams: The digitization destination after report processing at the Central Processing Unit. There are two digitization streams: through Google (in collaboration with the University of Michigan) or the University of North Texas (UNT). Reports entering the Google stream must be in print and all components of the report (maps, foldouts, etc.) must be of a uniform size. Reports entering the UNT stream may be print, microcard or microfiche, or other media that uses film and miniaturizes the text. Components of the print reports do not have to be uniform in size. If a Content Contributor is lending reports and therefore wants them returned, those reports will also enter the UNT Stream for nondestructive scanning.
TRAIL Annual Meeting: The hybrid or online meeting usually held in the Spring and open to all TRAIL Member Organizations and Personal Members. The meeting is a venue for acquainting everyone with TRAIL, providing updates, and serving as a strategic planning meeting.
TRAIL Guides: Online listing of series inventories. These inventories are useful in determining what TRAIL has processed and what reports are needed.
TRAIL Metrics
TRAIL statistics are updated every six months, generally in January and July. Some statistics reported below are for the most recent six months, while others are cumulative.
The statistics below are current as of January 1, 2025.
Cumulative Statistics
| Number of TRAIL reports available in the HathiTrust Digital Library | 66,755 |
| Number of TRAIL items available in the University of North Texas Digital Library | 34,698 |
| Total Reports/Items in Repositories | 128,435 |
| Total Reports/Items Available | 101,453 |
Statistics for the most recent six-month period (January - June 2025)
| Number of technical reports processed for digitization | 0 |
| Usage of TRAIL content held at the University of North Texas | 146,519* |
| Number of TRAIL search interface sessions | 2,898 |
| Number of TRAIL search interface users | 2,379 |
*During this period, UNT began filtering out more bot traffic, resulting in slightly lower usage numbers
Current Statistics (as of July 1, 2025)
| Number of TRAIL institutional members | 56 |
| Number of TRAIL personal members | 19 |
Definitions
Number of reports processed
The number of reports that have been processed and counted in one of TRAIL's repositories. Processed reports may not be publicly available.
Total Reports/Items Available
The combined number of reports (from each TRAIL repository) that are available for public view.
Usage of UNT-located TRAIL content
The number of uses of the TRAIL items stored in the University of North Texas (UNT) Digital Library. It is not yet technically possible to provide similar usage statistics for the TRAIL content stored in the HathiTrust Digital Library, TRAIL’s other digitization/preservation partner.
Number of TRAIL search interface sessions
The number of times individual IP/browser combinations accessed the TRAIL search interface for up to 30 minutes.
Number of TRAIL search interface users
The number of individual IP/browser combinations that access the TRAIL search interface.