The onset of the cold war in 1947 ushered in an era of fear and uncertainty in nuclear technology. The Atoms for Peace speech delivered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in 1953 spurred on the founding of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957. The IAEA's statutes recognized the need to "…foster the exchange of scientific and technical information on peaceful uses of atomic energy". Thus, with the IAEA Board of Governors approval in 1969, INIS was established in May 1970, fifty years ago, as a mechanism to provide access to a comprehensive collection of references to the world's nuclear literature. INIS has grown from a modest 25 members to a unique global information resource with more than 150 members. It maintains a repository of over 4.3 million bibliographic records, of which 1.6 million are full-text. Each year, more than one million visitors make 1.9 million searches, viewing 3.2 million web pages. This paper discusses ways INIS operates, the role of its members, the importance of international cooperation, contribution to nuclear science, information sharing goals, and the benefits society has from open access to nuclear information.