NCSA's Digital Information System (DIS) is the culmination of several years' work by the Media Technology Resources Group. DIS began as a database archive of photographic prints, slides, and videos of visualization projects processed through NCSA's Media Production Suite. This collection quickly grew into an in-depth online repository of multimedia information using NCSA's Mosaic browser.
The inspiration for this project began with the need to more effectively handle and process requests for many of NCSA's 5,000 education and outreach products. DIS will soon become a fully functional repository for virtually all audiovisual projects produced at NCSA, and it will allow easy access and retrieval of graphics, movies, and textual information via NCSA Mosaic or any other Web browser.
An extensive amount of information is already available to the global audience through the DIS. It may be accessed through the NCSA Home Page, under Multimedia Exhibits, or at the URL below. As of April 1995, there are over 1,100 still images online.
Users of this online archive can efficiently search, pinpoint specific information, and view images. They can send NCSA a formal request for an image via electronic mail. (Soon online orders will be processed directly through the Media Technology Resources Group using Web-formatted forms.)
NCSA's online archiving continues to grow. For example, the DIS is incorporated into the National Science Foundation's MetaCenter Science Highlights Repository. In the future, the group hopes to include all 2,100 slides from NCSA's collection in the DIS. At least another 20 digitized videos will be added to the DIS by the end of September 1995.
The Media Technology Resources Group is looking to improve the DIS and solicits comments and feedback from users. The developers, Cordelia Baron Geiken and Douglas Fein, may be contacted by email at cgeiken@ncsa.uiuc.edu and/or dfein@ncsa.uiuc edu (Internet). Cordelia Baron Geiken is a multimedia technology associate in NCSA's Media Technology Resources Group.
Cordelia Baron Geiken is a multimedia technology associate in NCSA's Media Technology Resources Group.
