Notice: Request for Information (RFI) Regarding the Digitization and Modernization of the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) and the Leveraging of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information (STEI) Stored in the NTRL

The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is seeking general information, feedback, suggestions, and experiential and technical insights from stakeholders to inform NTIS's goal of fully digitizing, modernizing, and enhancing the utility of the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL). NTIS has historically collected, indexed, abstracted, and stored U.S. Government-sponsored technical reports and made them available to the public through the NTRL. To further unlock the NTRL's intrinsic value, NTIS aims to digitize records that are part of the NTRL but currently exist only in physical formats. Leveraging the information archived within the NTRL may include making the data more accessible to AI and advanced computing applications. NTIS seeks to understand the opportunities, challenges, and priorities that may attend NTRL's efforts to modernize and make any resultant high-quality technical federal data sets publicly available.

What this means for youThis is a government request for public comment on digitizing old federal research reports and making them easier for AI tools to use. It has no direct effect on your daily life yet, but it shapes how public government data may be used by AI later.