NIST WORKSHOP ON CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC DATABASES. Vicky Lynn Karen, Alan Mighell, Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 USA

The NIST Workshop on Crystallographic Databases was one in a series of NIST-sponsored workshops each addressing a particular type of data. A main goal of the Workshop was to foster interactions between providers of crystallographic databases and various user communities. Workshop proceedings will be made available to the general scientific community in a special issue (May/June, 1996) of the NIST Journal of Research (to request a copy, e-mail karen@tiber.nist.gov). The organization of the journal issue parallels that of the meeting, with manuscripts from the speakers organized into three major sections followed by a discussion on the adequacy of current crystallographic data activities. The first section covers formal data activities; the second, scientific usages; and the third, data transfer. In this talk, the status of the crystallographic data efforts will be briefly discussed. Currently, the crystallographic community is being well served. The Data Centers have built evaluated databases covering all classes of compounds and they have developed theories and scientific programs for standardizing, evaluating and searching the data. Nevertheless, the manuscripts from the workshop clearly reveal that the data field is in a period of dynamic transition that is being driven by many factors including a greatly increased user demand for information. This talk will also outline some of the future directions which may include the cross-linking of entries in crystallographic and related chemical/materials databases, the evolution of unified systems for searching a group of related databases, and the development of software to aid in materials design and properties prediction.