An Interview with Sasha Gurke on the Release of ASM on Knovel
The content team at Knovel is thrilled to publish ASM content, extending our collection of authoritative materials information. No one is as excited as Sasha Gurke, Senior Vice-President and Co-founder of Knovel. In this phone interview, Sasha shared with me his long history working with ASM and the value of this authoritative materials information.
Sasha Gurke: A long time ago. I met the team at ASM when I was first working with Gil Kaufman on National Materials Properties Data Network (NMPDN), his brainchild. Gil was, of course, a senior engineer with Alcoa for 25 years and then VP of the Aluminum Association.
This was a grand idea, the national network. I was working at ACS (American Chemical Society) at the
time. I joined Gil in this endeavor. Because ASM always was known for lots of good materials data, we engaged them about putting some of their data on this network. This was at the end of eighties or perhaps the beginning of nineties.
The NMPDN became part of STN International.
In 1996, I moved to join Chris [Forbes] and Bill [Woishnis] at William Andrew Publishing, which was predecessor of Knovel. I brought this connection [to ASM] basically. . . We developed Rover, a CD ROM database delivery platform and William Andrew marketed it to organizations, including ASM. The Rover platform allowed for numeric search for property data, hierarchical search where I classified all materials, metals and plastics in this case. . .
MC: So what was entailed in digitizing ASM International’s content?
SG: ASM started giving us content for the Rover platform in 1997 or 1998. Lots of keying was involved as many of those data were not in the electronic format. Many publications were included in full text mode because we weren’t sure of the market for it. It was lots of work . . . AlloyFinder was a combination of three books, two volumes of the Worldwide Guides and the Woldman’s Engineering Alloys Guide.
We loaded ASM Materials Data. I still have the CD with the wrapper around it. (As he says this, I can hear Sasha rummaging around his home office for the CD.) It says Rover™, Electronic Databook. ASM Materials Data. William Andrew Publishing. The CD-ROM was sold for ten years at least. We published conference proceedings for them and the biggest project was the Handbook of Ternary Alloy Phase Diagrams. I built the phase diagram viewer for this, and that served as the prototype to what we see now on Knovel. . . . We were doing CD-ROMs up to point when we started Knovel. We stopped because we had to focus on the online platform. And they wanted to develop their own know-how internally.
One thing I want you to see is that part of our contract was not just delivering CD-ROM, but we created the database. [When ASM delivered data this year for publication] it was still in our structure, very similar to what we have in Knovel now. . .
Unfortunately, they did not update the database [after the relationship with William Andrew Publishing was terminated]. All the fields were complete only to the point when I worked for them. They probably didn’t have resources for maintaining the database.
MC: Why is it important for this content to be included on Knovel?
SG: ASM content is comprehensive, it’s tons of information. They started building this database of materials information at the beginning of the fifties. ASM is unique in that they have very strong relationship with industry. Their established philosophy is to bring in as much expertise from industry as possible. Other societies I’ve worked with, like ACS, are tilted toward academia. ASM is dedicated to the production and sharing of best practices, practical experience. And the scope of the information they produce is very wide.
MC: What’s attractive for Knovel?
SG: Because it’s the most comprehensive, having this content puts us in unique position. This is what information sources like Knovel is all about. The more comprehensive we are, the more successful we’ll be in delivering the answers. It’s also very good quality, trusted because they work very closely with experts in industry.
MC: What will be the benefit to our subscribers for having this information available on Knovel?
SG: The M in ASM used to stand for Metals and then the society broadened their scope to include all materials. Still because [the move to cover all materials] happened just 10-15 years ago, their content predominantly covers metals. A lot of it is about processing, processing techniques like heat treatment for example. But really it covers everything — design, manufacturing and products.
The Atlas of Stress and Strain Curves, these curves are the bread and butter of design. For design you have all the information, like the pedigree of the material: ultimate tensile strength, yield strength, all major mechanical properties for design.
Heat Treater’s Guides will be very important. During the manufacturing process a number of different thermomechanical treatments are used — annealing, relieving, quenching — and, as a result of these treatments, the crystal structure, phase structure changes. Attributes like hardness change. The heat treater is almost like a creator of materials. Heat treaters respond to specs from customers. For anything — truck body, toolbox — I’m going to stamp this and I need to stamp the cover so I’m writing to them in the spec what kind of properties this stainless sheet should be so I can manufacture that part by stamping. [Heat treaters] apply different conditions of heat treatment in order to manipulate properties.
This is very valuable information.
MC: And the Alloy Digest will be published on Knovel beginning in autumn.
SG: Yes. Manufacturers information is usually incomplete. Manufacturers give some information that convinces people that theirs is the product they need, but their data are by no means complete. [Alloy Digest] provides much more information – information that comes from the manufacturers, plus information obtained from other published sources.
The Above ASM Titles are currently available on Knovel. For more information on this new premium content, please visit: http://pages.knovel.com/ASM.html
