________________________________ From: Malcomb, Lou <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2020 7:17 AM To: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> Subject: RE: [External] Re: APSRS Historical Aerial Photography Database Years ago before I retired, U.S.G.P.O. partnered with the Big Ten Libraries to provide access to floppy disks and CD-Rom depository items through a virtualization project. For APSRS see: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual_disk_library/index.cgi/664290 There are manuals about how it functions. There are several U.S.G.S. products on the site and also several on other federal mapping resources. I thank the staff at Indiana University Bloomington for continuing to provide this invaluable service to the Federal Depository Library Program community. Lou M. From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Jablonski Sent: Monday, May 18, 2020 3:21 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [External] Re: APSRS Historical Aerial Photography Database This message was sent from a non-IU address. Please exercise caution when clicking links or opening attachments from external sources. I think it’s a totally worthwhile effort. As Maureen points out, the UCSB database isn’t the same thing. The APSRS will make a great validation point for us. I’d be happy to host a copy at UCSB. Jon Jablonski Director, Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory Spatial Data Librarian UCSB Library 805-699-0058 On May 18, 2020, at 9:36 AM, m Kelley <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Jeff, Your post today is wonderful news to me because I was working on a project in my department prior to this Covid-19 outbreak. I interned at the USGS in the early 1990s and remembered using APSRS and thought the database was a wonderful resource. But I was dismayed that an Internet search had no APSRS online! The EROS Data Center website was no help and, as usual, difficult to navigate. I had to use the UCSB air photo database, and it was sadly not the same thing (please do not tell Jon Jablonski I said that!). As you can surmise, it has been quite a few decades since I dove into air photo projects. Any suggestions would be helpful and I would be very much interested in seeing a digital copy of APSRS because many of the air photo projects are from the early 1990s. Thanks in advance. On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 9:15 AM Jeff Essic <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Hi Everyone, If you have any interest in historic aerial photography, then please read this and I encourage any feedback you have. The APSRS (Aerial Photography Summary Record System) database is a rich compilation of past American air photo flight projects that occurred prior to 1995. The database was released on CD in 1996 through the government documents depository program, and uses a proprietary query interface. The query system is no longer compatible with modern 64-bit computers and operating systems, but last year using an old laptop, I was able to extract what I believe are all 2,793,826 records. The records include lat/long coordinates that approximate project extents, based on corners of the 7.5 minute USGS grid, as well as limited project descriptions and dates. I have converted all the data to a GeoPackage file that is approx. 800 MB in size. If you aren't familiar with the APSRS, here is a description from the CD User's Manual<https://www.google.com/books/edition/APSRS/vxRrqf_wWLcC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=apsrs&pg=PA35&printsec=frontcover> (Section 2): "The Aerial Photography Summary Record System (APSRS) is an information system for determining the availability of aerial photographs that meet specified criteria over a given geographic area. The APSRS CD-ROM contains approximately 2.8 million records referencing data that describe the holdings of over 600 contributors from Federal, State, and local government agencies, universities, and private industry. "Each APSRS record can contain up to 13 descriptive fields; not all fields in all records contain data..." Additionally, here's the USGS Product Spec sheet<https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1996/0220/>. Note, if you google APSRS, Google thinks you are really looking for the ASPRS, a society, so the first few hits may cause confusion. When I first looked at the data, I was dismayed by the number of errant points. After spending some more time with the data, however, I believe a large portion of the errors can be cleaned without too much difficulty. It's still too early to estimate how much time it might take though. Questions I have: Are the APSRS data still valuable to anyone? Personally, I have used it already in the past 6 months or so to help people looking for what photos might exist for certain locations at certain points in time. So I think there is still value, but I would like to hear from others. Has anyone else already migrated the data into a currently usable format somewhere? If so, please share the details. Has anyone cleaned the errors and missing data? I am primarily concerned with location errors, so that when querying by location, you can count on getting reliably accurate results. I have found that there are typos in the lat/long coordinates, and errors in the location text field (state or description) that do not correlate with the lat/longs. So far, I've cleaned NC, SC, VA, WV, and KY, and they took a couple of hours each. CA has by far the most errant points. Basically, I'm trying to decide what to do and where to go next with this, and would welcome input. I would also really welcome any volunteers who would like to help clean the data, if we go that route. I am willing to share the data with anyone who has an interest in using the data or working on cleaning, as long as it's not re-sold. I'm also concerned about versioning, if there's more cleaning done, so we have to be careful about that. Here are some screenshots: Worldwide Extent<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1girCBLZ_VHQUp7rE7lIL9ky7Bzd0epSa/view?usp=sharing> CONUS Extent<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d8jiz9Ytm-TfTbzKGVe2XFzASvmblPPn/view?usp=sharing> FIPS field coded for North Carolina<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tKl135C-X2K59B9iDuega8FyJs3WQvCJ/view?usp=sharing> - one typo puts point at Toronto, cluster coded for NC should be TN, cluster in VA I'm not sure about FIPS field coded for West Virginia<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lHsKZHp_4wu9xflKSUNwcpPgB6YtNjOI/view?usp=sharing> - typos in FIPS field, WA instead of WV FIPS field coded for California<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e-M8U3zual8QdAc5UTJOHHaqO25RUItL/view?usp=sharing> - many points outside of CA Thank you very much, Jeff Essic ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jeff Essic Data & Visualization Librarian North Carolina State University D.H. Hill Library, Data & Visualization Services Box 7111, Raleigh, NC 27695-7111 (919) 515-5698 http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/gis -- Maureen Kelley, PhD Lecturer, Geography San Jose State University