OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT (OTA) REPORTS on CD-ROM 
 
Sherry DeDecker 
University of California, Santa Barbara 
 
The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment closed on September 29, 1995.  During its 23-year 
history, OTA provided Congressional members and committees with analysis of the scientific and 
technological issues that were relevant to public policy and legislative action.  These disks contain all the 
formally issued reports of the OTA, as well as many background papers and contractor papers - over 
100,000 pages of the best available analyses of the scientific and technical policy issues of the past two 
decades. 
 
Most of these reports are available in print in the Government Publications section of the Davidson Library; 
search PEGASUS by title to locate available reports. 
 
 
GETTING STARTED 
* Obtain the OTA disk caddy from the Electronic Arcade desk. 
 
* Insert the entire disk caddy into one of the CD-ROM workstations. 
 
* Double-click quickly on the appropriate alphabetical box of cd-rom titles. 
 
* Double-click quickly on OTA. 
 
SEARCHING 
 
* Click on the color-coded navigation ellipse to 
 begin your search:  
orange	returns to the initial OTA screen 
red	selects OTA history 
blue	selects publication list; you can search by  
title, years or topic 
gray	instructions about searching the OTA disks 
 
USING THE TOOLBAR 
 
Magnifying glass     zoom; enlarges document 
 
Arrows     move between pages 
	middle arrows - jump forward & back 1 page 
	end arrows - move to first and last pages of document 
	[To select a specific page, click on the page icon on the  
	lower left corner of the screen.] 
 
ABC	select/copy text; use control key to select and highlight  
	desired section 
 
Binoculars 	Search for word 
	1st from left - searches current document 
	2nd from left - searches index 
 
 
PRINTING 
Click on File, Print 
Select Entire Document or Pages; click o.k 
 
DOWNLOADING   
* To download as a text file (what you see on the screen), type p <enter>.  Highlight Print table to file 
<enter>. 
 
*Insert your formatted diskette into drive a or b and  
type drive and filename, e.g.  a:banks.doc   <enter>. 
 
 
EXITING THE SYSTEM 
Press the <END> then y.   
 
Flip open the CD drive and the caddy will eject automatically.  Return the caddy to the Electronic Arcade 
desk. 
 
Sherry DeDecker 
U. S. Documents Librarian 
University of California, Santa Barbara 
7/97