Federal Science Repository Service

Documents, images, videos, and more represent the mission and work of an agency, but preserving and creating access to these resources can pose challenges in funding, design, and maintenance.

To help agencies preserve and increase access to their resources, NTIS has formed a private-public partnership with Information International Associates to develop the Federal Science Repository Service (FSRS).

The FSRS develops user-friendly resource repositories that:

• Support preservation and long-term access
• Promote further use of an agency's content
• Are durable against technology changes, yet flexible
• Supports multiple data-types including reports, images, videos & more
• Are based on standards
• Promote interoperability
• Support open government initiatives
• Can be tailored to an agency's needs

The first two FSRS repositories have come online in 2012, including the latest version (3.0) of the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) (www.ntis.gov/ntrl.aspx), consisting of 2+ million metadata records and almost 700,000 full-text reports related to federally-funded scientific and technical research. The second FSRS repository to come online is the Deepwater Horizon Repository (noaa.ntis.gov); a searchable, online collection of DWH data and information from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) data centers, libraries, and websites, as well as from federal and state partners. The repository will provide comprehensive access to data and information captured and generated by agencies and groups involved in response and restoration efforts for the Gulf Of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Agencies interested in creating repositories can select components and tools already existing within the FSRS, but also can share the development costs of new, common tools and services with other agencies. Thus, the FSRS helps design agency-specific Repositories that serve as distinct entryways to content.