A Selection and Archiving Strategy for Science Records

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center archives electronic science collections that total over two petabytes in size and over 100,000 rolls of aerial and satellite film. Limited resources, the evolution of missions, and recommendations from advisory committees have led to the development of a scientific records appraisal process as a means for determining long-term archiving priorities. The process was formed through extensive literature searches describing approaches used to appraise administrative, physical artifacts, and science records. Less information was available that specifically addressed science records; therefore, relevant portions from each records appraisal process was assembled. In addition, involvement with the appropriate stakeholders was deemed critical and led to the active participation of scientists, records managers, and senior managers in the process. As part of the documentation portion of the process, an extensive online tool was developed to capture information describing each collection and detail preservation or access challenges that may be part of a collection. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration recommends the tool as a best practice for U.S. federal agencies. To date, over 30 science collections have been appraised. This paper will detail the process used to appraise science collections for long-term archiving, the composition and rationale for the tool elements, and the results the USGS has attained. Context The USGS EROS Center was established in 1972 to receive, archive, and distribute satellite images from the Landsat series of satellites. For the past 37 years, the Landsat satellites have provided continuous data of the Earth’s land mass, coastal boundaries, and coral reefs -creating an unprecedented comprehensive record of landscape dynamics. Landsat-5 and -7 continue to capture hundreds of images of the Earth’s surface each day. The imagery provided from the satellites was recorded on digital media. Historically, most researchers were more comfortable analyzing film images using photo interpretation techniques developed extensively in World War II. Large corporations, government research labs, and academic programs were among the first to use computers for their analysis work. To meet the needs for analog and digital users, both electronic and images written to film were created and archived. Landsat digital images total over 2.3 million and occupy nearly 650 terabytes. Landsat film images total nearly 3 million. (These numbers do include duplicate images.) Beginning in the late 1970s, the USGS EROS Center began to accept and solicit observations taken from aerial platforms. These images were originally collected by U.S. federal agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (1.8 million images), the Department of Defense (650,000 images), the Bureau of Land Management (80,000 images), the Bureau of Reclamation (60,000 images), and the National Park Service (35,000 images). Combined with the USGS’ own 5.7 million, over 8.6 million aerial images supplement the Landsat imagery. Adding to that mix are numerous smaller collections containing satellite or aerial digital or film files. The collections date from the late 1930s up to the present and geographically occur primarily over the United States for the aerial images and throughout the world for the satellite images. Figure 1. Aerial photograph example. Color-Infrared aerial photo over the Crystal City, VA area, March 17, 1994.