The NPS Focus Digital Library is the National Park Service digital image/resource management solution sponsored by the NPS Office of the Chief Information Officer. Structurally the system is a composite of many image collections separately maintained by parks/programs but offers one-stop searching and browsing across all of them.
Unlike other digital library projects in the United States, the NPS Digital Library is completely decentralized with separate centers being set up in virtually every State and U.S territory. The NPS Focus project provides the technology infrastructure, guidance and training for the NPS. In general it does not create the digital content being added to NPS Focus.
Each park or program will decide what digital resources will be added to its collection on the NPS Focus Digital Library. This decision will often be based upon available financial and human resources.
Features:
- NPS Focus consists of an integration of the Blue Angel Technologies' MetaStar 8 software, a java based platform based on open standards and Oracle 9i, and the LizardTech image management suite including the ExpressServer 4.6 for serving images.
- Parks/programs are able to create their own collections on the system independently by creating metadata/cataloging records and then uploading images. They "own" the records in their collections.
- The image server delivers high quality images over the Web using server-generated image viewers; users can zoom and pan images and change the size and format on the fly; bandwidth efficient for fast-loading
- The user has a variety of image download options including the size, format and resolution of the original image.
- The NPS Digital Library includes all image types: pictorial, drawings, maps, texts, and GIS DOQ/DRG images
- Simple and advanced searching enables users to limit searches by date and format type.
- "Browse by subject" and "browse by park" enable users to drill down through subject hierarchies to find digital resources.
- All images and records are permanently archived in open standards formats (TIF, JPG, XML) on separate professional archiving system
- Extensive security and auditing functions have been put in place to protect the integrity of the system and its digital resources.
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