Chemistry and Chemical Engineering 

What's a "technical report" ?

A technical report is "an important means of... recording... the activities and the results of progress and research in... science and technology.

"Where once reports were simply the reporting of government-sponsored research, they are now used as a means of communicating information for technical development throughout the world."

[Report Series Codes Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1986]

National Technical Information Service (NTIS) [1964+, with some info as far back as 1899] - NTIS is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce and is responsible for storing and disseminating technical reports generated from U.S. government-sponsored work. The database includes 3 million+ unclassified DoD, DoE, NASA, and other reports.

NTIS reports can be searched in two ways:

1. 1964+ -- You can search NTIS's site for citations
   
   
2. 1982+ -- It's better to search on the library's version of the NTIS database (see database below).
   

To GET reports: Call or go to the Government Publications Library on A Level (410-516-8360), and ask at the reference desk to have an NTIS report ordered for you. This service is free of charge.


Science.gov -- 200 million pages of science information and R&D results for 36+ U.S. government agencies.

• Search here for to get the list of specialized U.S. government databases available for searching
  
  
• Go here for the page that allows you to search across all of them at the same time
  

WorldWideScience.org -- This web site, which also includes the information within Science.gov (listed above), is a gateway to national and international scientific databases. You can search resources from 17 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and the UK.

The Virtual Technical Reports Center Maintained by the University of Maryland -- In addition to federal sites, this site also lists the holdings of many universities and institutions from around the world. (Beware; unfortunately, many of these links are inactive.)

Specialized Tech Report Collections

Los Alamos Technical Reports site -- In 2002, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) terminated public access to thousands of unclassified reports on nuclear science and technology. Fortunately, almost all of the withdrawn reports were acquired and preserved so that the public has access to them.

TRAIL (Technical Report Archive and Image Library) [1959-1982] -- This site has most of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) Monograph Series. (NBS is now NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.)

• These detailed reports include materials data, mathematical functions, time series, diffraction patterns, measurements, standards, and much more. Most of the data provided are from direct measurements.
  
  
• This series of tech reports is highly referenced with 2,000+ citations in Web of Science.