National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 

NIST founded in 1901 is a non-regulatory federal agency within the Commerce. NIST's mission 

is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, 

standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. 

Open Data NIST Public Access Plan 

In response to the Memorandum from the Executive Office of the President for the Heads of 

Executive Departments and Agencies: Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded 

Scientific Research, dated February 22, 2013, NIST developed a NIST Public Access Plan. 

The plan describes NIST efforts to make freely available to the public, in publicly accessible 

repositories, all peer-reviewed scholarly publications and associated data arising from 

unclassified research and programs funded wholly or in part by NIST. Within the constraints 

of its mission and funding, NIST will also promote the deposit of scientific data arising from 

unclassified research and programs, funded wholly or in part by NIST, free of charge unless 

an exception exists, in publicly accessible databases. A NIST Public Access Policy will 

articulate the roles and responsibilities of NIST staff for ensuring public access. 

Improved Access to Publications and Archival Materials 

The NIST is partnering with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use the existing PubMed 

Central (PMC) repository system to provide public access to full-text peer-reviewed scholarly 

publications and associated data for NIST, leveraging the well-established search, archival, 

and dissemination features of PMC. NIST plans to acquire a web-based manuscript submission 

and peer-review workflow solution that enables geographically dispersed stakeholders, 

including both NIST employees and non-NIST collaborators, to electronically submit, edit, 

and search bibliographic information and view progress-tracking information during internal 

review. 

The NIST is also working with the Internet Archive, under an arrangement with the Library of 

Congress, to digitize the hundreds of technical reports it has published over more than 100 

years, with the goal that the entire legacy collection of NBS/NIST technical series publications 

will be available to the public through the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital 
System. Some of these technical publications were targeted to very specific audiences, but 

many are about topics of interest to a broader audience. 

The NIST staff members are also enhancing the NIST Digital Archives by adding information 

about and images of artifacts in the NIST Museum collections and photographs portraying 

NBS/NIST history. NIST staff members are tracking the number of web hits on and the number 

of citations of those reports and papers to make a measurement-based determination of the 

effectiveness of this strategy to increase the impact of NIST research. 

Improved Access to Data 

The NIST’s plan for providing public access to data consists of three components: data 

management plans (DMPs), an Enterprise Data Inventory (EDI), and a Common Access 

Platform providing a public access infrastructure. Generation of data management plans has 

begun, providing documentation of plans for storage, archival, and accessibility for NIST’s 

multiple types of data. The EDI is a catalog of the datasets with a user-friendly front end to 

enable NIST scientists to easily enter metadata about their datasets and an export capability to 

facilitate feeding that metadata into data.gov. The Common Access Platform will create an 

infrastructure of registries to make it easier for users to find and use datasets from any source. 

To enhance its ability to store, exchange, and disseminate its research data to external

stakeholders and the public as well as to share it between NIST technical staff and their 

immediate collaborators, NIST is making foundational improvements to its data management 

infrastructure. There are four prongs to this initiative: 

- Analyze data management practices across NIST organizational units, document 

procedures, and build out flexible and extensible tools to support data management plans 

and the Enterprise Data Inventory; 

- Create a robust data management framework for data of all working levels by extending 

cloud-based storage and network connectivity, and deploying easy-to-use interfaces for the 

management of NIST data; 

- Pilot development of a NIST public access data portal with improved interfaces, with focus

on supporting Standard Reference Data; 

- Accelerate the identification, assessment, authorization, and deployment process for widely 

used software tools that support data exchange and research collaboration. 

Materials Genome Initiative 

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) is a multi-agency initiative designed to create a new 

era of policy, resources, and infrastructure that support U.S. institutions in the discovery, 

manufacture, and deployment of advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost. 
The discovery and optimization of new materials for innovative products is a time-consuming

and laborious process, and computational design of materials has begun to emerge as a 

powerful new tool for materials discovery and optimization. However, major efforts in both 

theory and experiment are needed to provide the data that underlies successful modeling. 

Given NIST expertise in the integration, curation, and provisioning of critically evaluated data 

and models, NIST has assumed a leadership role within the MGI, establishing essential data 

exchange protocols and the means to ensure the quality of materials data and models. These 

efforts will yield the new methods, metrologies, and capabilities necessary for accelerated 

materials development. NIST is working with stakeholders in industry, academia, and 

government to develop the standards, tools, and techniques enabling acquisition, 

representation, and discovery of materials data; interoperability of computer simulations of 

materials phenomena across multiple length and time scales; and the quality assessment of 

materials data, models, and simulations. 

Privacy 

The NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Privacy and Open Government. 

Whistleblower Protection 

The NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Inspector General. 

Websites 

Several years ago, as part of an effort to expand dissemination of its research results, NIST 

implemented a CMS, which included access to an improved database of research papers authored 

or co-authored by NIST researchers. Content is “tagged” by topic, enabling the public to subscribe 

to receive new information posted on the website on specific topics of interest such as 

nanotechnology or energy-related research. Currently, there are more than 110,000 subscribers 

who receive information on approximately 160 different topics. The NIST website also includes 

several blogs that allow members of the public to comment or ask questions about posted articles 

and the CMS includes icons to easily share content from the NIST site with social media websites 

(more than 3,000 “shares” in the first 4 months of FY2015). 

External Website Migration 

The NIST is migrating its central web pages from a proprietary CMS to Drupal, an open source 

CMS. The new website will allow greater flexibility in the functionality of NIST internal and 

external web pages. It will also be hosted in the cloud, which will improve NIST’s ability to 

meet current and future needs. 

Social Media 

The NIST has created sites on YouTube (more than 4,300 subscribers, nearly 1 million video 

views), Facebook (more than 20,000 “likes”), Twitter (16,000 “followers”), LinkedIn (10,000 

followers) and Flickr (more than 17,000 images viewed). To ensure that as many people as 

possible benefit from NIST’s work, news of major research results posted on the NIST website 

is routinely announced through these additional social media sites. 
Transparency 

The NIST strives to be consistently open and transparent in its interactions with the public and 

news media. 

The Institute implements the Department of Commerce Public Communications Policy, which 

includes explicit approval for research staff to talk with the news media and the public directlywithout prior permission from the Public Affairs Office--about the results of their taxpayer funded 

research. 

The NIST Public Affairs Office regularly offers communications training to its research staff, 

including describing this portion of the policy, to ensure that they are committed to broadly 

disseminating NIST results to a wide variety of audiences. Plain language training is available 

online and through regularly scheduled in-person courses on campus. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit dedicated to encouraging transparency in 

scientific communication, surveyed the NIST technical staff and found that NIST scientists “are 

aware of free speech protections in the official policy and report a comparatively high degree of 

openness.” 

The NIST provides a dedicated phone and email public inquiries referral service during all business 

hours to ensure that any member of the public may request assistance in locating specialized 

technical reports or experts or in resolving customer services concerns they may have. The Public 

Inquiries email is available in the footer of most NIST web pages to facilitate easy access to this 

service. 

NIST’s policy on scientific integrity is also easily accessed on its homepage. 

Public Notice 

The NIST follows departmental guidance from the Office of Public Affairs. 

Records Management 

The NIST manages its records in accordance with NARA and Department of Commerce 

regulations, ensuring that records are economically and effectively created to meet business needs, 

kept long enough to protect rights and assure accountability, and preserved and available for future 

generations. NIST is updating its records management directives to be clear and concise, 

conveying records management requirements and responsibilities to all NIST staff. 

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests 

The NIST responds to Freedom of Information Act requests in accordance with Department of 

Commerce regulations and Department of Justice guidance. NIST emphasizes the importance of 

transparency of its operations and regularly performs discretionary releases of documents and 

information that could qualify for exemption from release, but for which there is no foreseeable 

harm. The NIST FOIA Office works collaboratively with the NIST Operating Units to obtain 
information in response to requests in a timely manner and to encourage proactive disclosure of 

information. 

Proactive Disclosure 

In November 2013, NIST initiated a review of its cryptographic standards development process in 

response to concerns about the integrity of NIST cryptographic standards and guidelines. As a 

critical component of this review, the NIST Director charged the NIST Visiting Committee on 

Advanced Technology (VCAT) to form a Committee of Visitors (CoV) to serve as technical 

experts to assess NIST cryptographic standards and guidelines development process and if 

necessary provide findings on how it could be improved. NIST made publicly available all 

materials provided to the panel by posting the content on the VCAT website. NIST also held open 

discussions with multiple stakeholders for awareness and input. 

Participation 

The NIST has a rich history of participation in numerous standards development efforts, dating 

back to the beginning of the 20th century when the National Bureau of Standards (which became 

NIST in 1988) was founded. Currently, over 450 NIST staff members participate in over 120 

standards development organizations on both a national and international scale. 

To increase citizen involvement in the development of standards to address new technological 

challenges, NIST has reached out into the community to convene workshops at key locations 

around the country, organize diverse stakeholders, and establish consensus‐developing 

organizations. This strategy has broadened participation and organized communities to take action 

in a prioritized, timely manner. It has been used successfully for developing standards frameworks 

for the Smart Grid sector and critical infrastructure cybersecurity. The strategy is currently being 

used to develop a community-centric resilience framework and to bring a uniform structure to the 

previously ad hoc development of forensic standards and guidelines. 

Smart Grid Interoperability Panel 

In 2009, the NIST initiated the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) as a vehicle for NIST 

to solicit input and cooperation from private and public-sector stakeholders in developing the 

smart grid standards framework. With NIST encouragement, the SGIP was transitioned to a 

non-profit private-public partnership organization in 2013, supported by industry stakeholder 

funding and funding provided through a cooperative agreement with NIST. The SGIP does not 

develop standards directly, but rather it provides an open process for stakeholders, including 

NIST, to coordinate and accelerate standards development and harmonization and to advance 

the interoperability of smart grid devices and systems. 

Green Button Initiative 

The NIST provides leadership to the standards development work in the White House inspired

and industry-led Green Button Initiative, which enables consumers to download their own 

energy usage information from their utilities’ websites in a standardized electronic format. 

Working closely with the SGIP, industry and other federal agencies, NIST has led the 
development of the technology foundation for Green Button, including standards, testing, 

developer tools and technical support for implementers. Based on significant nationwide 

voluntary adoption by utilities, and with support by NIST, over 100 million U.S. consumers 

(and over 8 million Canadian consumers) now have Green Button data access to help them 

better understand and manage their energy usage. 

Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity 

Starting in 2013, the NIST has worked with stakeholders to develop a voluntary framework –

based on existing standards, guidelines, and practices – for reducing cyber risks to critical 

infrastructure. The first version of the Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure 

Cybersecurity was released on February 12, 2014. Since then, NIST has collected user 

feedback and experience through a Request for Information and a public workshop. NIST also 

facilitated working sessions on specific technical areas that will be used to enhance the 

Framework in the future. 

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace 

In 2011, the President signed the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace 

(NSTIC). This important White House initiative aims to improve the privacy, security, and 

convenience of online transactions through a collaborative effort between the private sector, 

the public sector, advocacy groups and other non-profit organizations. The National Program 

Office (NPO) was established at NIST by the Secretary of Commerce to coordinate the 

implementation of the NSTIC. Modeled after the SGIP, NIST initiated the Identity Ecosystem 

Steering Group (IDESG) as a multi-stakeholder vehicle for the development of the Identity 

Ecosystem Framework – the policy, standards, and accreditation processes for Identity 

Ecosystem participants. Over the past three years, NIST has funded twelve private sector pilots 

through cooperative agreements to facilitate the adoption of NSTIC-aligned identity solutions. 

Privacy Risk Management Framework 

The NIST also has initiated development of a privacy risk management framework to support 

improved privacy engineering in the design of information systems. NIST is developing a 

NIST Interagency Report on privacy engineering objectives and a risk model. NIST held two 

public workshops, with attendance from industry, government and academia, in FY2014 to 

inform the development of this report, and presented the draft concepts through a live webcast 

with an interactive question and answer period. Comments received were posted publicly. 

Organization for Scientific Area Committees 

In 2014, the NIST collaborated with the Department of Justice and the forensic science 

community to create the Organization for Scientific Area Committees (OSAC), established to 

coordinate development of standards and guidelines for forensic science. OSAC has named 

402 new members to 23 subcommittees on forensic disciplines such as firearms and toolmarks 

and facial identification, and is bringing a uniform structure to what was previously an ad hoc 

system, with the goal of improving the quality and consistency of forensic science in the United 

States. 
Disaster Resilience Framework 

The NIST is leading the development of a community-centric Disaster Resilience Framework, 

which will establish the overall performance goals; assess existing standards, codes, and 

practices; and identify gaps that must be addressed in order to bolster community resilience. 

In 2014 and 2015, NIST is convening a series of Disaster Resilience Workshops around the 

country to engage a broad network of stakeholders with multidisciplinary expertise to help 

develop the Disaster Resilience Framework, with a focus on the role that buildings and 

infrastructure lifelines play in ensuring community resilience. To date, NIST has convened 3 

workshops and has another scheduled for mid-February 2015. The first version of the Disaster 

Resilience Framework will be released for public comment in the spring of 2015. 

Big Data Public Working Group 

Big Data is another important area in which NIST is leading public participation in standards 

development. Although there is broad agreement about the remarkable potential of "Big Data" 

to spark innovation, fuel commerce, and drive progress, the rate at which data volumes, speeds, 

and complexity are growing is outpacing scientific and technological advances in data 

analytics, management, transport, and more. NIST is leading the NIST Big Data Public 

Working Group (NBD-PWG) to develop consensus definitions, taxonomies, reference 

architectures, and technology roadmaps to accelerate the deployment of robust Big Data 

solutions. The NBD-PWG, open to the public with active membership from industry, 

academia, and government, has five subgroups developing a working draft of a Big Data 

Interoperability Framework that will be available for public comment in February 2015. 

Collaboration 

To help accomplish its mission, NIST seeks out high-quality partnerships, collaborations, and 

other interactions with U.S. companies, universities, and agencies at the federal, state, and local 

levels. Each year, NIST hosts about 2,700 associates and facility users who collaborate with its 

scientists. NIST works with over 1,300 manufacturing specialists around the country to help small 

and mid-size manufacturers improve and grow. NIST has several designated user facilities 

available for both proprietary and non-proprietary research. Access to these facilities is generally 

provided on a first-come, first-served cost-reimbursable basis. In addition, NIST jointly operates 

research organizations explicitly established to promote the kind of cross-disciplinary 

collaborations that accelerate research results. NIST hosts as many as 100 conferences, workshops, 

symposia, and other meetings annually. Most are co-sponsored with other federal agencies, 

academic institutions, professional societies, or industry groups. 

National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence 

The NIST has established the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) to 

collaborate with user communities and vendors and integrators of commercially available 

technologies to build practical cybersecurity reference designs that can be rapidly applied to 

the real challenges that businesses face each day. 
Centers of Excellence 

The NIST is also in the process of creating Centers of Excellence to provide an interdisciplinary 

environment where researchers from NIST, academia, and industry will collaborate on 

emerging areas of basic and applied research and innovations in measurement science. The 

first of these centers, the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD), was established 

in 2013 to accelerate materials discovery and development; provide opportunities to transition 

new breakthroughs in advanced materials to industry; convene multidisciplinary and multisector communities for in-depth discussions; and provide training opportunities for scientists 

and engineers in materials metrology. 

The second, the Community Resilience Center of Excellence, was selected through a meritbased competition and announced in February 2015. The new center will collaborate with 

NIST to achieve its long-term goal of developing tools that individual communities can use to 

assess their resilience. This includes evaluating the effectiveness of alternative measures 

intended to improve performance and minimize post-disaster disruption and recovery time. 

These tools will improve decision-making so that communities can build a “business case” for 

the measures they take. 

A third center, the competitive selection of which is to be announced in FY 2015, will support 

NIST's efforts to strengthen forensic science through the development and delivery of 

improved measurement and analysis technologies and the development of best practices and 

standardized methodologies to improve evidence interpretation and reporting. 

Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office 

The NIST provides leadership and coordination across all federal agencies with program in 

advanced manufacturing by leading the interagency Advanced Manufacturing National 

Program Office (AMNPO), hosted by NIST. In particular the AMNPO is charged with 

enabling industry-led, private-public partnerships focused on manufacturing innovation to 

enhance technology transfer in U.S. manufacturing industries. With participation from all 

federal agencies involved in U.S. manufacturing, the AMNPO is establishing the National 

Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), a network of linked Institutes for 

manufacturing innovation with common goals but unique concentrations, which will create a 

manufacturing research infrastructure for U.S. industry and academia to solve industryrelevant problems, as well as provide work force training needed in manufacturing. To date, 

these Institutes have been stood up by the mission agencies DoE and DoD, but it is proposed 

that DOC, USDA and other agencies soon fund institutes. NIST is responsible for convening 

all Institutes with the NNMI for sharing of best practices and providing support infrastructure. 

NIST also responsible for managing a competitive proposal and review process to select and 

fund Institutes funded by DOC that bring together industry, academia, and government partners 

to collaborate and co-invest in manufacturing innovation. 
Technology Transfer 

The NIST works to disseminate its research results as broadly as possible. In October 2014, 

NIST and NOAA co-sponsored a Technology and Entrepreneurship Showcase to bring 

together innovative technologies, licensable inventions, research and engineering facilities, 

small business support resources at the Federal and state levels, and sources of funding—all 

under one roof, and all available for networking. Excluding presenters, over 60 individuals 

attended. NIST plans to continue this series in 2015, working in conjunction with the 

Commonwealth of Virginia. NIST also plans to host two “listening sessions” in Maryland to 

hear from the local communities about how federal labs can contribute to economic 

development. 

Lab to Market 

The NIST plays a prominent role in fulfilling requirements of the Lab to Market Cross Agency 

Priority (CAP) Goal, one of 15 goals established as part of the President’s Management Agenda 

and stemming from the Presidential Memorandum on Technology Transfer of 2011. As part 

of this effort, in FY2015 NIST is initiating a pilot NIST entrepreneurship program, partnering 

with the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to integrate minority business 

development into the Lab to Market process, working with other agencies to develop policies 

and tools to bring investors and capital to the technology commercialization process, holding 

workshops with universities on extramural commercialization, and conducting economic 

studies to evaluate impact in identified priority areas. Also as part of the Lab to Market Team, 

NIST has placed all of its technology data and facility use data on data.gov in a machinereadable format for other parties to use. 

Challenges 

Global City Teams Challenge 

The NIST is partnering with other federal agencies and the private sector to sponsor a yearlong Global City Teams Challenge to help communities around the world work together to 

address issues ranging from air quality to traffic management to emergency services 

coordination. NIST is inviting communities and innovators to create teams that will foster 

the spread of “smart cities” that take advantage of networked technologies to better manage 

resources and improve quality of life. Voluntary participants will work collaboratively to 

build, deploy and test transformative “Internet of Things”/”CyberPhysical Systems” 

applications within communities across the U.S. This new challenge will leverage the 

success of the SmartAmerica Challenge, which from December 2013 through June 2014 

brought together more than 100 companies, universities and other organizations to form 

teams that developed and applied networked technologies. That challenge demonstrated 

that these technologies have the potential to create jobs and business opportunities and 

provide socioeconomic benefits. 
Head Health Challenge III 

The NIST has joined with the NFL, GE and Under Armour to launch Head Health 

Challenge III, an open innovation competition to advance materials that better absorb or 

dissipate energy. These new materials could improve the performance of protective 

equipment for athletes, military personnel and those in dangerous occupations. The 

challenge, which will award up to $2million for innovative materials, is part of the $60 

million Head Health Initiative, a multiyear collaboration between GE and the NFL 

launched in March 2013. It aims to support the discovery, design and deployment of 

advanced materials that can improve the protection of athletes, members of the military 

and others from brain injuries by better absorbing and mitigating force. Additionally, NIST 

will work to refine measurement approaches, convene the research and industry 

communities to assess the state of performance testing for impact energy 

absorbing/dispersing materials and identify gaps in these measurements. The ultimate goal 

will be to develop standard testing methods for these materials systems over the next 

several years. 

NIST Open Government Initiatives 

The table below shows a list of initiatives for NIST. 

Table 9 - NIST Initiatives 

Operating Unit Project Status 

Estimated 

Completion 

NIST Improving Dissemination of Basic Research Results via 

the NIST and other websites Live / Operational _ _ 

Improving access to NIST research results through social 

media including Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, 

and Twitter 

Live / Operational _ _ 

Improving Access to the Digital Data Repository of NIST 

Collections, including Publications, Artifacts, and 

Photographs Relating to Measurement Science 

Live / Operational _ _ 

Making Photos and Videos from the 9/11 Investigation 

available to the public 

Completed 

(August 2011) _ _ 

• Project – Improving Dissemination of Basic Research Results via the NIST and other 

websites

Several years ago, as part of an effort to broadly disseminate its research results, NIST 

implemented a CMS, which included access to an improved database of research papers 

authored or co-authored by NIST researchers. Content is “tagged” by topic, enabling the public 

to subscribe to receive new information posted on the website on specific topics of interest 

such as nanotechnology or energy-related research. Currently, there are more than 60,000 

subscribers who receive information on approximately 160 different topics. The website also 

allows members of the public to comment or ask questions about posted research articles and 
to easily share content from the NIST site with their own websites (more than 3,000 “shares” 

in just 4 months of this fiscal year). 

In the last 110 years, NIST published hundreds of technical reports such as NIST Interagency 

or Internal Reports (NISTIRs) and Technical Notes – which were targeted to very specific 

audiences. Some of these topics are of interest to a broader audience, so NIST is republishing 

them electronically as papers in the Journal of Research of NIST. Because the Journal of 

Research is indexed in major scientific/technical databases, these republished reports will reach 

a broader audience and are more likely to be used and cited, increasing the impact of NIST 

research. NIST staff members are tracking the number of web hits on and the number of 

citations of those papers to make a measurement-based determination of the effectiveness of 

this strategy. 

• Project – Improving Dissemination and Access to Basic Research Results via Social Media 

The NIST has created sites on YouTube (more than 2,000 subscribers), Facebook (more than 

4,500 “likes”), Twitter (4,800 “followers”), and Flickr (more than 17,000 images viewed). To 

ensure that as many people as possible benefit from NIST’s work, news of major research 

results posted on the new NIST website is routinely announced through these additional social 

media sites. 

The NIST continues to use Wikipedia to improve dissemination of its research results to the 

public. For selected topics NIST staff members continue to add links to NIST technical reports 

or papers in the Journal of Research of NIST, to make NIST research information more readily 

available in a highly used web resource. NIST staff members are adding links to images and 

descriptions of scientific instruments in the NIST Digital Archives. NIST staff members are 

tracking the number of web hits on and the number of citations of those reports and papers to 

make a measurement-based determination of the effectiveness of this strategy to increase the 

impact of NIST research. 

• Project – Improving Access to the Digital Data Repository of NIST Collections, including 

Publications, Artifacts, and Photographs Relating to Measurement Science 

Currently, information regarding NIST publications is electronically available through its 

Research Library’s online catalog, which includes links to the full text of many publications. 

Information about some of the objects in NIST’s museum is also available through the NIST 

Virtual Museum. The online catalog and the NIST Virtual Museum are available to the public. 

In fiscal year 2011, NIST implemented the NIST Digital Archives, a digital library repository. 

The Digital Archives conforms to the latest library and publishing metadata standards to 

enhance the ability of other scholarly and research repositories to discover and harvest 

information. It contains the full text of NIST’s technical publications, including the Journal of 

Research, as well as images of and information about NIST historical scientific objects. The 

metadata conforms to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, which is 

the accepted standard within scholarly and scientific communities for making the contents of
information collections available to researchers. File formats adhere to Government Printing 

Office, Library of Congress, and NARA preservation requirements. NIST is collaborating with 

the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive to digitize NIST’s legacy publications through 

the Open Content Alliance FedScan initiative. 

The NIST Digital Archives permits the digital forms of NIST’s technical publications and other 

content to be easily searchable by the public through major Internet search engines, such as 

Google, Google Books, Google Scholar, WorldCat, and Yahoo. Through the FedScan initiative 

NIST’s legacy publications are scanned, processed through a rigorous quality assurance 

protocol, and made available to the public in a variety of file formats (e.g., Daisy, EPub, 

Kindle) through the Internet Archive website. All file formats are also provided back to NIST. 

These multiple efforts and searchable access points significantly enhance dissemination and 

use of NIST’s research results. 

• Project – Making Photos and Videos from the 9/11 Investigation available to the public 

The NIST acquired a large amount of visual material as part of its World Trade Center 

Investigation. A subset of this material, including photographs and video clips, was organized 

into a searchable database in which each image and video clip was characterized by a set of 

attributes including: source/owner, time of shot/video, content (including building, face(s), key 

events such as plane strike, fireballs, collapse), and other details. These materials can be