NASA Spacelink team honored
- By Bryant Jordan
- Mar 12, 2001
Spacelink
NASA's pioneering Spacelink site—the space agency's first-ever virtual
public library—will be honored March 15 with an award for aerospace education
NASA launched Spacelink (spacelink.nasa.gov/index.html)
in 1988, before the World Wide Web existed, said Jerry Berg, a spokesman
for the Marshall Space Flight Center, which hosts the site.
The interactive site, which connects educators and students to aeronautics
and space information and resources, this week will receive the National
Aeronautic Association's Frank G. Brewer Trophy for aerospace education.
"Spacelink is a key element in NASA's education program, and we appreciate
this prestigious recognition of its entire community," said Frank Owens,
director of NASA's education division in Washington, D.C.
The Brewer trophy, awarded annually since 1943, will be presented to NASA's
Spacelink team during the National Congress on Aviation and Space Education
in Minneapolis. It will be the first time in 21 years that the trophy has
been presented to a team and not to an individual.
Berg said it's impossible to say if Spacelink was the government's first
virtual library.
"Somebody in DOD probably had some kind of a library," he said. "There were
bulletin boards for people to share information."
But Spacelink certainly had to be in the forefront of virtual libraries
open to the public, he said.