NIST OWM produces publications, technical guidance documents, and documentary standards on legal metrology, laws, regulations, measurement devices, specifications, and tolerances.
This compilation includes NIST Handbooks specific to weights and measures, legal metrology, and laboratory metrology subject areas.
The NIST Handbooks are documentary standards developed via a consensus standards development process that involves all stakeholders. They are considered a Technical Report Series of “recommended codes of engineering and industrial practice (including safety codes) developed in cooperation with interested industries, professional organizations, and regulatory bodies.”
Learn more about the NIST Handbooks and their history here.
This compilation includes NIST publications and documents pertaining to the Metric (SI) program, STEM outreach materials and educational activities, federal register notices (FRNs), and other historical documents.
NIST Special Publications (SPs) are a series of publications appropriate to a particular subject area. The NIST SP 2200 series is specific to legal metrology and weights and measures subject areas and covers technical content that is not included in NIST Handbooks or other publication series.
This compilation includes all the NIST Special Publications (SPs) for OWM.
This compilation includes several technical guidance documents for the laboratory metrology program.
NISTIRs are interim or final reports of NIST projects of transitory or shorter-term duration, including those that will be published subsequently in a more comprehensive form.
This is an online collection of the OWM Technical Analysis documents starting from 2022.
The NIST OWM Analysis is an extensive technical analysis document prepared to assist the weights and measures community as it deliberates on committee agenda items before the National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM).
This is an online collection of NIST Special Publications that serve as the official reports from the National Conference on Weights and Measures (NCWM) Annual meetings from 2008 to 2021. The NCWM is responsible for publishing meeting reports from 2022 onwards.
Upon request, a USB compilation of NCWM Annual Reports from 1905 to 2021 in Adobe Acrobat PDF format is available.
NIST (as NBS) published the first legal metrology standards in 1918 as Miscellaneous Publication No. 1 Manual of Inspection and Information for Weights and Measures Officials. This continues to be published as NIST Handbook 44 and is adopted by all 50 States. For more background on the origin of the NIST Handbooks 44, 130 and 133, please see The NIST Handbooks and NCWM: A Brief History.