----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library welcomes the data to be provided by NASA's Office of Mission to Planet Earth (EOSDIS). The subject matter certainly falls into our realm of interests. Dr. Eisenbeis, Universities Space Research Association, seeks to know the "reasonable number of users that might be expected to use these data ... at and through libraries." At the SIO Library we've never sought to quantify public use of the data bases we already have loaded up. We just look at the potential users based on the subject matter and put it out there. The library advertises all these sources of data available either at our public computer work stations or from remote offices here at Scripps (& some off campus locations). We don't have meters mounted on our computers so we don't know what the volume of traffic is from remote locations. Our goal is to provide data for people at their own offices so they don't have to come to the library. Our computers POINT TO RESOURCES (such as EOSDIS) using our World Wide Web Home Page. There are likely hundreds of potential users of EOSDIS here at Scripps but since there is a satellite facility in operation here I'm not sure if users would derive data thru the Internet or just walk up the hill to those rusty trailers housing the Satellite machinery and get to it from there. It's a very complicated scenario here at Scripps and no easy way to determine how much this data will be used from here. I'd recommend that NASA just make this stuff available, let the libraries point to it, and wait and see what happens. If no one calls up it won't be because the libraries didn't at least tell their clientele about it. - Paul Leverenz Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library [log in to unmask]