NASA Headquarters Library

I realized that I've been heavily focused on the slow demise of newspapers and print, so I thought I'd look at something completely different for my last blog.

Though science is not really my thing, I understand the attraction some folks have, especially when it comes to space and space missions. The NASA library headquarters OPAC has a wealth of information, though its intended primary audience is clearly NASA employees and those who just want to find out more about what NASA is up to seem to be considered a distant secondary audience.

The design is great and it's generally easy to find things from the homepage.

My biggest complaint is that all of the items under the "Search" headings, with the exception of the report server, are password protected and/or are only available at the headquarters or from employee computers -- like the library catalog, GALAXIE, a tab called aeronautics and space and the technical standards system. I don't understand why they don't have an Intranet for such things, since the other parts of the site seem relatively transparent and open to the public. It seems a bit misleading to have the search capabilities there if not everyone can use them.

The databases, articles and newspaper features are also a little bit clunky. To the credit of the site's designers, at least the article/newspaper tabs say that searches of the features are limited to NASA staff, which is nice. If only they also somehow added that some of the sites that they're linked to might make users pay for the content.

But there are still lots of resources available to the general public. By far, the most interesting and cool feature of the site are the links to photos that are taken from space. The photos are so cool that I'm curious why they don't promote them more actively.

More than a dozen missions are listed and the average person looking around the NASA site can find interesting language links, astronaut biographies and even a cool NASA site that can be set to different grade levels. I like that they offer cataloging information for each book that is highlighted on the website, since you can't access any of the materials on the site unless you work for NASA.

I also like that there are dozens of links to databases, most of which are free, from resources like the FAA to Copernica, a site that lets you look at artwork related to space endeavors.