“Tipping Over SUVs at Goddard”

Did you know that Goddard has one of the world’s largest centrifuges? Weighing around half a million pounds and measuring 120 feet long, this machine packs in action.

The Center’s High Capacity Centrifuge, operated by Code 540, is housed in it’s own circular building (Bldg. 15). The centrifuge’s capabilities are impressive: the rotary accelerator is capable of rotating to a force of 30-Gs 5,000 pound payloads at up to 30 rotations per minute. In addition, the 3 degree-of-freedom/tilt mounting fixture allows the orientation of test articles to be positioned in a wide range of attitudes and angles.

In honor of National Engineers Week, the Library is hosting a special Engineers Event featuring Speaker Stan Wojnar, Assistant for Operations, Code 540, on Tuesday, March 25, at the Goddard Library, (Bldg. 21) from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm.

Mr. Wojnar will present “Tipping Over SUVs at Goddard.” Learn about Goddard’s partnership with the Department of Transportation to test SUVs on the centrifuge. The Event will feature an entertaining and informative video of the centrifuge at work and will be followed by what should be a lively discussion and refreshments.

(This event was originally scheduled for February 19 during National Engineers Week.)

Library Under Construction...

During the first week of February Library staff was informed that construction to bring the Library up to Code regarding emergency exits would begin on February 10, 2003. This construction project involves the removal of a narrow set of stairs located in the book and journal stacks, replacing them with an enclosed stairwell, and creating an additional emergency exit out of the building.

Library staff sprang into action, coordinating the relocation of materials within the Library and to off-site storage. More than 3,200 books and 1,000 documents were relocated to the Library’s first floor reading room area. On February 6, movers arrived to pack books and journals for removal to off-site storage. Library staff worked alongside the movers keeping inventory of the materials that went into each of the more than 650 boxes. Storage space was obtained in the Code 230 storage facility in Laurel. While materials needed to be removed to make way for the construction, some of the ,materials will remain in off-site storage because the new stairwell and exit will consume a good deal of shelf space. The Library catalog was updated to reflect the location change for these materials. In all, a total of 1,550 linear feet of shelving and their contents were removed to make way for the new stairwell and exit.

Due to weather delays, construction did not begin until Monday, February 24. Current estimates indicate construction will last 4-6 months. Fortunately, such activities as jack hammering will take place on the weekends. Workers will begin their day at 6:30 am and should finish by 3:00 pm.

Please bear with us as we make our Library a safer place.

UMD Co-Op Student Joins Library Staff

Clay Templeton, a graduate student enrolled in the University of Maryland, College of Information Studies, has joined the Goddard Library part-time as a Graduate Co-Op. Clay has a B.S. in Computer Science from Mary Washington College and started graduate school in June 2002.

During the summer of 2002 Clay interned at the Goddard Library working with digital archiving, specifically two digital archiving models and standards. The first, OAIS, is a general vocabulary for digital archiving and an ISO standard whose originators and editors are from Code 600 at Goddard. The second standard he researched was METS, a metadata encoding and transmission standard and framework for organizing data for retrieval and interoperability.

Clay published his research findings in a presentation entitled “Preserving Project Documents: A Standards-Based Approach”. He presented this paper with his academic advisor, UMD’s College of Information Studies, Professor Robert Allen, at the Library’s September Open House Event. The presentation dealt with the OAIS and METS models and the implications for implementing their usage here at Goddard.

As a Co-Op student Clay will focus his energies on metadata issues. He will explore metadata standards like SCORM and evaluate compatibility with other metadata standards such as Dublin CORE. In addition, Clay will work with the EOS Lessons Learned Project, the NSSDC’s archiving standards work, and the Library’s own Colloquia video indexing project.