The Oil Shale Information Office (OSIO), as part of the Colorado Oil Shale Technology and Research (COSTAR) Center, facilitates the annual Oil Shale Symposium, edits and publishes the proceedings of the symposium, and creates digital research data to be accessed by the world and COSTAR members. Full-text digital versions of some repository items for which copyrights have been released are currently being made available. Continue to visit our web site to see what new digitally accessible items have been added.

The Mission of the OSIO is to present accurate information on technical and non-technical developments in oil shale production, provide access to educational materials including resources in the Tell Ertl Oil Shale Repository to a worldwide audience, and offer expert support to anyone who wishes to use the resources of the Center. Resources include: maps, drawings, photos, and technical reports, in addition to newly digitized formats currently being added to the Colorado School of Mines' Alliance Digital Repository.

The Tell Ertl Oil Shale Repository is located at Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines. The Repository contains approximately 67,000 documents related to the development of the oil shale industry throughout the world, with emphasis on the western United States. It is perhaps the world's largest, self-contained, publicly accessible collection of oil shale materials. Documents include published and unpublished technical reports, manuscripts, photographs, slides, and maps. Items of interest to technical and historical researchers include original research reports, personal notes of key oil shale developers, and essential series such as Synthetic Fuels Quarterly Report and Oil Shale Symposium Proceedings. Materials in the Tell Ertl Archive must be used in the Tell Ertl Room of Arthur Lakes Library, limiting access to researchers able to visit the Repository. The collection is searchable in the open access Tell Ertl Database; please note, though, that the full-text of documents is not available online. However, with funding provided by COSTAR, a digitization project is underway. First to be digitized and uploaded on the Colorado School of Mines' digital repository were full-text copies of the Synthetic Fuels Quarterly Report, Oil Shale and Related Fuels Quarterly Report, and the Sinor Synthetic Fuels Quarterly Report. The location of this free online service is the CSM Digital Repository. Articles from the Oil Shale Symposium Proceedings will also be made available online as copyright permits. As funding and time allows, more documents from this rare repository will be digitized and accessible via the web. For more oil shale resources, please visit the Tell Ertl Oil Shale Repository web site.