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RSVP now for this great tour. NIST is a closed campus, so you cannot visit on your own and there are no last minute RSVPs accepted... they need the full list of names for our group tomorrow! *** Transportation Update: *There's a free NIST shuttle to and from Shady Grove Metro station. Also, ALA@UMD board member Theresa Polk has room in her car to take a few passengers from College Park. Contact Theresa [log in to unmask] If you drive, there is free parking at the NIST. *RSVP to [log in to unmask] * Did you know? The NIST Library was recently featured on Wired and on NPR's Kojo Nnamdi Show. Don't miss this! ** The ALA@UMD along with SAM and the SLA Student Group are excited to offer this special opportunity to tour the award-winning library, museum and archives on the closed-to-the-public campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Join ALA@UMD, SAM and SLA on Friday, February 22 from 2 to 4 PM for this exciting tour of a very special federal library. - Learn about the history of the NIST and tour the museum and archives - Tour the NIST Research Library, which houses over 200,000 volumes http://www.nist.gov/nvl/about_iso.cfm - Learn about library operations, programs and services unique to the NIST Information Services Office - Plenty of time for Q&A The National Institute of Standards and Technology is involved in an amazing array of projects ranging from studying why the twin towers collapsed on 9/11 (http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/) to how to protect the US from cyber assaults (http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/nccoe-022112.cfm<http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/nccoe-022112.cfm>). Through their TREC testing program, they have had a huge influence on advancements in information retrieval systems (http://trec.nist.gov/). They keep the atomic clock that is the official time of the United States ( http://www.nist.gov/pml/general/time/index.cfm) and they do much, much more. The NIST Information Services Office creates and maintains the knowledge base and provides research assistance in support of the scientific and technical mission of the NIST. From the NIST website, "Founded in 1901 and now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST is one of the nation's oldest physical science laboratories. Congress established the agency to remove a major handicap to U.S. industrial competitiveness at the time—a second-rate measurement infrastructure that lagged behind the capabilities of England, Germany, and other economic rivals. Today, NIST measurements support the smallest of technologies—nanoscale devices so tiny that tens of thousands can fit on the end of a single human hair—to the largest and most complex of human-made creations, from earthquake-resistant skyscrapers to wide-body jetliners to global communication networks." Here is an article on Wired ( http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/unidentified-scientific-tools/) and an interview with NPR's Kojo Nnamdi ( http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2011-08-11/evolution-precision-measurement-nists-archive). Read more about their efforts to digitize the NIST museum artifacts here: http://www.infotoday.com/online/nov11/Avila-Sanders-Martin-Tips-and-Tools-for-Digitizing-a-Museum-Collection.shtml See the attached flier for details! Don't miss it! RSVP to [log in to unmask] .ALA@UMD events and tours are open to everyone... you do not need to be a member to participate. We are planning lots more tours and events for this semester. There will be a ProQuest research skills workshop at Shady Grove campus on March 2, a tour of the National Museum of the American Indian Archives and Library on March 8, and a tour of the National Library of Medicine on April 19. Stay tuned for more info and follow us on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/umdala Hope to see you soon! Your ALA@UMD Executive Board: Katie Rapp, Alisha Abrams, Katie Cole, and Theresa Polk -- ALA@UMD http://www.studentorg.umd.edu/ala/ Follow us on: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/umdala Twitter: @alaatumd