Wallops Island Balloon Technology: Can't See the Repository for the Documents

Abstract

Since the Wallop’s Balloon Technology documents repository began approximately 9 years ago, the Goddard Library has become increasingly involved in developing digital archiving capabilities. The Library developed the Digital Archiving System (DAS) which is a prototype infrastructure for creating a combined metadata repository that allows metadata for heterogeneous digital objects to be searched with a single search mechanism and presented in a single results page. With this, the opportunity has been presented to expand the usability of the print repository. The Balloon Technology documents relate only to the specific subject of construction of scientific balloons and at the current time number over 4,300. The documents exist primarily in paper format and are organized according to the accession number. The project is currently at a crossroads where decisions will have to be made regarding the reorganization of the database from many different perspectives. An assessment of the project was conducted to determine future direction. An assessment survey was created using the Knowledge Management Assessment Tool (KMAT) from the American Productivity & Quality Center and from the recommendations that The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) put forth in “The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper. Survey participants agreed to move forward with project by scanning the documents, mapping existing database records to the current metadata elements, seeking copyright permissions, and forming a joint committee of balloon scientists and librarians. All have agreed on the importance of digitizing this collection to the balloon science community. Further, it was agreed that once complete, the addition of the balloon documents to the DAS (an institutional repository) could serve as a model for other NASA and/or government projects trying to organize, collect and preserve specialized knowledge that manifests largely in grey literature.