posted 07-30-2011 03:08 PM               

This is genuinely the end of an era. At the same time, this is the beginning of a new era in terms of what can be done in terms of storage and availability of information.

Two main issues define the state of the archives of our first 53 years in space at the moment.

1. The transfer of hardcopy mediums to digital is perhaps 10% or less than what should be in digital form. Some digital copies need rescanning to preserve info for best available quality.

2. The existing information both digital and hardcopy is very scattered, from NASA vaults at all centers, NARA records group 255, contractors, museums, and private collections.

Here is what should be in a unified archive:

• Press Kits (including contractor produced), mission releases
  
• All mission photography taken in flight or by NASA or other government agencies. In High resolution. NASA (KSC, SXX, AXX, ISSXX year series)
  
• Mission Audio in mp3, wav.
  
• Transcripts, Transcript Summaries (STS-41C through 135)
  
• Flight Data File
  
• Training Materials (SCOM, FPHB, Console Handbooks, Familiarization Manuals)
  
• Special publications (SP) and Technical Memorandum (TM - series), Technical Translation (TT - Series)
  
• Mission Reports, GNC reports, Safety Evaluations, etc.
  
• Technical Crew Debriefings

I believe we are short changing ourselves by not taking advantage of the technology that would allow for storage and even collaboration to organize a project like this. To all on the board, I'm attempting to make it clear that the non-digitized material is all in a slow state of decay.

As collectors we are all concerned, I hope, with preservation. The digital means of display, while they may change over the years are far less labor intensive than paper means to preserve or change mediums (eg. jpg to pdf, OCR scanning). I will be blunt here as well. The paper medium, including books is dying. STS-135 lands and the waste paper bins at JSC overflow. Borders, a huge US book chain closes the same week. Library Science classes teach mostly computer and database archive management and searches.

To scan a document or digitize it in quality form is truly a labor of love.

I will leave this to the reader to decide this hypothetical situation. A person buys a manual at an auction for $1000. Said manual is yellowing with rusted staples but is legible. It yellows more for 5 years in private collection. The buyer believes he is responsible because its insured. People online ask "I wish we could find this manual" or ask questions that could be answered by it. While on vacation the buyers house burns down, floods, or falls in a sinkhole. Buyer collects $1000 or more.

Or the fire is averted or buyer was smart enough to keep document in safe then someone else buys manual in another auction for $1500 and the cycle continues with a more yellow document. Meanwhile, in rare instances, a poor quality copy is scanned and posted by NASA with degraded images.

Who has benefitted here? Is this responsible?

The issue involves heritage information availability versus using information in its old medium as purely an investment piece.

On the subject of photos, I do find the copyright watermarks on NASA made photos online almost ludicrous when I can find the same photo free from NASA - at higher resolution.