For many CIC members, FPInnovations will be familiar as the name of a private, not-for-profit organization that supports work in Canada’s forestry sector. With research laboratories and technology transfer offices across the country, chemists and chemical engineers have access to hundreds of staff members to help them tackle a wide range of challenges facing one of Canada’s major economic drivers.
Given the scope of these activities, FPInnovations also maintains a sizeable research library, which is now integrated into its Web site to provide easy access to expertise and knowledge assembled by industry. This resource offers a unique digital collection of more than 10,000 documents that span the gamut of forest-industry research from fundamental to pioneering.
A new search engine conducts searches of the full text of reports instead of relying only on keywords or abstracts to find documents. The user-friendly interface also offers a quick-start option that targets searches by forest-industry sector and top authors in addition to keywords. The database will eventually be expanded to include non-printed information, such as webinars.
A large portion of free reports and documents are searchable by the public; however, they do not have access to documents reserved for members only. FPInnovations members have exclusive privileges to download reports that are restricted to their sectors. For example, a pulp and paper member can download a restricted pulp and paper report, but not a forest operations report. As the trend of different sectors collaborating on projects grows, more reports will be available to several sectors. A one-time password-protected online registration will be necessary for members to access the restricted part of the database.