TREC_inc

Instructions for receiving the TREC disks.

The organizations supplying the data included on the TREC disks have either provided it free of charge, or for a fee, and it is critical to our continued good relationship with these people that we properly protect its use. The data is copyrighted, and also has commercial value as data, so we must be careful to use it only for research purposes rather than for its informational uses. There are permission forms ("User Agreement"'s) that express these ideas in a more formal manner. These forms must be signed and returned to NIST before you can receive the disks. The forms are located at

for the Individual form and

for the Organization data use form.

There is both an Organization form and an Individual form. You return the Organization forms to NIST; the Individual forms are retained by your site. One Organization form will cover both TREC Disks 4 and 5 (i.e., you need only send one form even if you are ordering both disks).

Each site is to keep an up-to-date-list of everyone that has access to the documents, and each of these people must sign an Individual form. Each site is expected to use proper file restrictions so that reasonable care is taken to restrict access to the data to only these individuals. Do not send the Individual forms to NIST.

The forms should be filled out as follows:

Organization form

-- The first line should contain the name of the smallest entity of your organization that will be using the data, e.g. Department of Computer Science, Natural Language Research Division, etc., so that the second line listing the number of people engaged in research is a reasonable number.

-- Corporation/Partnership/Legal Entity should be the name of your university, company, etc.

-- The address, telephone, facsimile, and electronic mail should refer to your address, telephone, facsimile, etc.

Second page. The person signing for the organization should be the principle investigator of the project who is assumed to be the person responsible for protecting the data. If this is a problem at your organization, then follow your organization's guidelines.

Accepted by: NIST will fill this out, and return a copy of the form to you Mail the form to the address listed on the form.

Individual form

-- The first line should contain the individual's name.

-- Organization should be the same name entered in the first line of the organization form. The Corporation, etc. and address, etc. should then be the same as filled in on the organization form in the corresponding slots.