Jeff,

The USGS supported the collection of the information published on the APSRS CDs.  The information has not been updated since around 2000.  I have a database dump of the information, but suspect most of the contents would be of little value today.

There is an effort from the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing - the similar acronym to APSRS - to maintain an online, keyword searchable inventory of aerial sources.  This free service went live spring of 2016 and contains references to several million frames of photography dating from the 1920s onward.  The system is not like USGS' Earth Explorer as so many sources do not have frame-based geographics.  The ASPRS Aerial Data Catalog is located at  http://dpac.asprs.org/

As part of the volunteer team that developed and maintains this service, feel free to shoot me questions.  Also, we are always looking for folks to contribute metadata to further advertise their holdings as the system really is a referral means to discovery sources of aerial photography and to provide the contact information for the sources.

Best,


John Faundeen, Archivist
U.S. Geological Survey, EROS Center
47914-252nd Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57198 USA
Office: 605-594-6092  Mobile: 605-838-7081


On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 4:06 PM, Jeff Essic <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hello,

The APSRS CDs released in the mid-1990s contain an database used to list all the federal-level aerial photo missions covering any given 7.5 minute quadrangle area.  To use, one must install a front-end software app for querying the underlying database.  The software is 16-bit and thus cannot be installed on modern 64-bit computers.  Meanwhile, the underlying database appears to be in a proprietary binary format that can't be easily opened and read.

I am thus wondering if anyone knows of a continuity plan to update the software and/or the database?  Or is there an alternative means for accessing the data, perhaps something online?  Using EarthExplorer, this can be done in a round-about way, but you have to select each agency one at a time to see what may possibly be available.

By the way, APSRS (not to be confused with ASPRS) stands for Aerial Photography Summary Record System.

I appreciate your thoughts and ideas!

Jeff Essic


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Essic
Data Services Librarian
North Carolina State University
D.H. Hill Library, Research Engagement Department
Box 7111, Raleigh, NC  27695-7111
(919) 515-5698
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/gis