Toxicology Information Center
In 1956, COT sponsors signed a memorandum of understanding creating the Advisory Center on Toxicology (ACT) to provide staff support and information services to COT and its sponsors. ACT began operations in January 1957. In 1978, ACT was reorganized to form today's Toxicology Information Center (TIC), which continues to provide support to COT, other NRC units, and federal agencies.
The TIC operates largely as a technical reference library with a collection of more than 150,000 documents and as a central source of information for COT and its sponsors. During the 1960s, when no computerized bibliographic retrieval tools existed specifically for toxicology, ACT created an extensive card catalog, organized by chemical names and toxicological data, that eventually included more than 50,000 chemical compounds. Today, the TIC has access to numerous automated data-retrieval tools, so its staff can rapidly provide COT and its sponsors with vital toxicity data that might not be found by less-comprehensive literature searches.
