Work Begins on Space Library Projects.

Last week in Libre Space Foundation HQ in Athens LSF hosted the kick-off meeting of the Space Library project. Papadeas Pierros (Director of Operations, LSF) and Daina Bouquin (Head Librarian at Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) headed the meeting which was joined by many members of Libre Space Foundation. The Space Library is an initiative led by the staff team at Wolbach Librar in collaboration with the Libre Space Foundation and received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The goal is to help new communities participate in satellite missions, engender public engagement in space science, and to fuel new research by improving access to scientific research artifacts and supporting their reuse. To achieve this our team is developing open metadata standards and enabling public engagement with space technology in public libraries.  For example the MetaSat project is a project to develop and prototype an open metadata schema to link data, software, and hardware from small satellite missions. The schema will be designed and piloted using SatNOGS and it’s success will be assessed by seeking feedback from the various users, teams and contributors involved in SatNOGS. It was a pleasure to welcome Daina and we look forward to this exciting work developing.