* collect, disseminate, and manage spatial data information,
* provide world-wide research level spatial data collections and facilities for analysis and teaching,
* provide a set of self-definable software and hardware tools for searching, viewing, transferring and manipulating spatial data,
* provide a highly trained, technically literate staff for assisting clients and,
* provide for long-term archiving and preservation of unique spatial datasets.
The climate-controlled 14,000-square-foot, 5-million item collection is unique among academic institutions for the diversity, quality and quantity of geographic data, and for its laboratory setting of sophisticated equipment to analyze both analog and digital data. At a conservative estimate, $250 million dollars would be needed to replace MIL's 5 million item spatial data collection. Among MIL's more notable holdings are:
* Multispectral Landsat I and II original transparencies covering most of the Earth's surface,
* NASA/Ames U-2 Earth resource data, both digital and film from 1960's to present,
* Teledyne-Fairchild film library of original aerial negatives from 1927 to 1984,
* World coverage of topographic and science mapping from 1900 to present,
* Digital elevation models and vector databases for the United States and other selected world areas and selected digital scenes from Landsat, Spot, NASA imaging systems and,
* Hundreds of CD and tape datasets of Earth and planetary bodies.
Supporting the collections are micro-browse copies of fiche catalogs from many parts of the world; on-line computer searching of the US Eros Data Center, Johnson Space Flight Center, NASA Ames, and Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) databases; and on-line Internet searching of many major research library catalogs. Laboratory facilities include digital and analog equipment for data analysis, viewing and manipulation.
Since its opening in 1979, MIL has averaged 25,000 users per year. In 1992, a ranking of spatial-data libraries in the Association of Research Libraries (the top 100 research libraries in the United States) placed MIL at number one. Additional evidence of the facility's visibility is its designation as one of three national non-NASA Space Shuttle viewing sites (the Library of Congress and Smithsonian being the other two) and as a United States Geological Survey Earth Science Information Center for California.
The and Imagery Library can be reached on the WWW at http://www.sdc.ucsb.edu