GETTING YOUR NAME ON THE RIGHT DESKTOPS, OR HOW TO BE FOUND ON THE INTERNET

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a governm ent agency within the Department of Commerce. The Standard Reference D ata (SRD) Program is part of NIST's Technology Services. This program provides well-documented numeric data to scientists and engineers for their research and development work. The data are species-oriented and tabular in concept, and the tables may be preexisting or generated fr om equations at runtime. In 1968, a Congressional mandate gave SRD cop yright authority and a requirement of cost recovery for delivery of th e data. This mandate adds a level of complexity to SRD's provision of data on the Internet. This article addresses initial experiments in de livering information on the Internet. The cost recovery aspects are no t addressed at this time.