posted July 24, 2008 11:58 AM               

NASA Images is a service of Internet Archive, a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections. NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.

The goal of NASA Images is to increase our understanding of the earth, our solar system and the universe beyond in order to benefit humanity.

To Come:

• Continuous updating of the media collections. Custom prints of the images with NASAImages.org.

• Space and science-related books and other merchandise through affiliate relationships.

posted July 24, 2008 12:01 PM               

NASA and Internet Archive Launch Centralized Resource for Images

NASA and Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library based in San Francisco, made available the most comprehensive compilation ever of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video Thursday. Located at nasaimages.org, the Internet site combines for the first time 21 major NASA imagery collections into a single, searchable online resource. A link to the Web site will appear on the NASA home page.

The Web site launch is the first step in a five-year partnership that will add millions of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content, with enhanced search and viewing capabilities, and new user features on a continuing basis. Over time, integration of nasaimages.org with nasa.gov will become more seamless and comprehensive.

"This partnership with Internet Archive enables NASA to provide the American public with access to its vast collection of imagery from one searchable source, unlocking a new treasure trove of discoveries for students, historians, enthusiasts and researchers," said NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale. "This new resource also will enable the agency to digitize and preserve historical content now not available on the Internet for future generations."

Through a competitive process, NASA selected Internet Archive to manage the NASA Images Web site under a non-exclusive Space Act agreement, signed in July 2007. The five-year project is at no cost to the taxpayer and the images are free to the public.

"NASA's media is an incredibly important and valuable national asset. It is a tremendous honor for the Internet Archive to be NASA's partner in this project," says Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive. "We are excited to mark this first step in a long-term collaboration to create a rich and growing public resource."

The content of the Web site covers all the diverse activities of America's space program, including imagery from the Apollo moon missions, Hubble Space Telescope views of the universe and experimental aircraft past and present. Keyword searching is available with easy-to-use resources for teachers and students.

Internet Archive is developing the NASA Images project using software donated by Luna Imaging Inc. of Los Angeles and with the generous support of the Kahle-Austin Foundation of San Francisco.

posted July 25, 2008 12:02 PM               

First and foremost, if indeed this is going to be seamlessly integrated into NASA.gov (as the press release promotes), NASAImages.org needs to be hosted on a better (set of) server(s). Perhaps NASA should reach out to another of its partners -- Google -- and ask for their assistance. The current site is slow to load and slow to respond, giving it a very clunky feeling.

They also need to reexamine the interface and its default settings. NASA's first attempt at a centralized database, the NASA Image eXchange (NIX) isn't by anyway perfect but it gets one thing right: the first few needs to maximize the number of images on the screen without scrolling so that the desired photo can be found quickly. NASAImages.org loads photos far too large on the first swipe, and while the user can choose a small thumbnail and tighter grid, these should really be the default.

They also need to either better define or install some type of rank or weight system. As it is now, the results seem to be very random -- and if there is a system defining order, it should be more obvious.

posted July 25, 2008 03:55 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by heng44:
Even those irritating lo-res JSC scans are there. You'd wish they would throw these out and replace them by proper scans.

---

I would use the photo numbers/code as filenames as well.

I did find some nice pictures though...

posted July 25, 2008 05:06 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Henk Boshuijer:
NASA must have HiRes scans of these pictures somewhere...

---

posted July 26, 2008 09:58 AM            

How much money can they afford to throw at this? Unless they can get volunteers to do the manual labor...

posted July 26, 2008 04:37 PM               

This is what the article says:

"In the first year under the five year agreement, Internet Archive will consolidate NASA's major online imagery collections. In the second year, digital imagery will be added to the archive. In the third year, NASA and Internet Archive will identify analog imagery to be digitized and added to their online collection."

If NASA and Internet Archive manage to follow this timeline we will have a great online picture database three years from now...

I can see their website is not perfect yet at this moment... but I appreciate their efforts.

posted July 27, 2008 12:23 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by Grungy:
Unless they can get volunteers to do the manual labor...

NASA shouldn't have a problem with disc space, but devoting the man-hours to this might be an issue.

---

But of course I hope in the near future they will add photos that even J.L. and I don't have.