National Institute of Standards and Technology

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a US Federal agency established 1901.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a US Federal agency established as the National Bureau of Standards in 1901, but was named Bureau of Standards from 1903 to 1934. It became the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, in 1988.

Contributions

The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) used the SEAC in conjunction with the Patent Office for a joint systems development program called HAYSTAQ. The two agencies wanted HAYSTAQ to be able to search the contents of a technical document in any field. Progress on the machine was slow and in 1961 a panel appointed by the commissioner of patents suggested that NBS should obtain funds to begin a research and development program in information storage and retrieval as well as establish a clearinghouse and coordinating center for information retrieval with the Patent Office. This program, although limited by funds, undertook projects which improved searching techniques. The HAYSTAQ project increased and improved search strategies as well as performed various psychological and statistical studies.

After World War II the United States National Bureau of Standards (NBS) was charged with the task of following developments in computing. In response, NBS began to index and abstract books, journals, reports and other literature covering a broad range of computer-related topics beginning in the mid-1940s. Eventually the enormity of the task forced NBS to abandon this work in 1978. Related materials were transferred the Babbage Institute.

TIPSTER Text Summarization

The TIPSTER Text Summarization Evaluation (SUMMAC) was the first large-scale, developer-independent evaluation of automatic text summarization systems. SUMMAC has established definitively in a large-scale evaluation that automatic text summarization is very effective in relevance assessment tasks. [1]

Text REtrieval Conference (TREC)

In 1992 as part of the TIPSTER Text program NIST co-sponsored a Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (part of the office of the Director of National Intelligence).[2] [3]

TREC became a continuing series of highly influential workshops focusing on a list of different information retrieval (IR) research areas, or tracks. Its purpose is to support and encourage research within the information retrieval community by providing the infrastructure necessary for large-scale evaluation of text retrieval methodologies and to increase the speed of lab-to-product transfer of technology.

A variety of TREC-like "conferences" have since been organized by others, including NTCIR (emphasis on Asian languages), CLEF (emphasis on European languages), and INEX (emphasis on semi-structured data).

Persons involved included Thomas C. Bagg, Madeline M. (Berry) Henderson, Joseph Hilsenrath, David R. Lide and Alfred J. Lotka.

Further reading

For NBS-NIST

• NBS-NIST History Volumes. [4]
• NIST at 100: Foundations for Progress. NIST. [5]
• Cochrane, Redmond C. Measure for Progress: A History of the NBS. Washington, DC: NBS, 1966. In-house history.
• Physics History Network. [6]

For information services:

• Adkinson, B. W. Two Centuries of Federal Information. Stroudsburg, PA: . Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross.

Papers

• National Archives. Records of the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST]. Record Group 167. 1830-1987. Correspondence, records of directors and associate directors, publications, records of institutes, records of divisions and sections, motion pictures, still pictures, etc. [7]
• Charles Babbage Institute Archives. Andersen Library. Minneapolis. 1956 - 1978. United States National Bureau of Standards collection of computer literature (Collection CBI 32). 731 boxes (241.25 cubic feet). Collection contains reports, manuals and publications from corporations, government agencies, and academic computing centers covering a broad range of computer-related topics. The collection only contains a few documents that predate 1962. [8]