viz.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration traces its roots back to the oldest scientific agency in the United States: the Survey of the Coast established in 1807. Today's agency has a much broader purview, providing forecasts for the National Weather Service, maintaining orbiting satellites to monitor the Earth's climate, managing the nation's fisheries, and conducting scientific research. The database containing the photographic documentation of these varied activities provides the subject of this week's review.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

The web interface for the NOAA Photo Library is presented to the user through a basic html webpage. The entry screen displays an Image of the Day. The NOAA Photo Library organizes some its holdings with a number of Collections. The Collections are linked in a frame to the left of the screen. The site also provides a simple search box that the user accesses through a link on a line of menu tabs that run below the "NOAA Photo Library" banner. The search function permits the user to input one or more terms, but it provides no advanced keyword searching, limiting or sorting functions. The search function is provided through Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce; Photo by Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Staff

The NOAA Photo Library contains many images related to oceanic and atmospheric research. Some of the Collections include "America's Coastlines," "Weather Service," "Fisheries," and "Coral Kingdom." There are also some interesting surprises among its holdings, including the "Treasures of the Library" collection which includes images from texts dating back to the 15th century relating to the study of the oceans and climate and a collection of historic prints on the "Histories and Methods of Fisheries" documenting American fisheries in the late 19th century.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

While the search function is limited, many of the photos have extensive "category" tags, and those tags can be used in the search to locate related images. Many of the Collections include sub-categories organized in albums, providing another means to navigate the extensive number of images that reside on the database.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

One valuable aspect of the NOAA collection and any collection of imagery authored by a federal agency is the lack of copyright attached to the works. According to section 105 of the Copyright Act, "Copyright protection...is not available for any work of the United States Government." Agencies often attach some limitations to the images they release. For example, NOAA suggests that their images should primarily be used for education purposes and require that their images be credited "to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce. Where a photographer is noted, please credit the photographer and his/her affiliated organization as well." Other agencies, such as NASA expressly prohibit using images in a way that suggests NASA commercially endorses a product or service. Outside of such requirements, however, images may be used freely.

Image Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce

Another strength of the Library is its inclusion of higher resolution images for many of the photos. In some cases, the original photos themselves were not high resolution images, so the higher resolution images provided on the website are of limited use, but for other images, such as photos of the historic book plates and more recent nature photography, the image quality is quite high.