NASA Spacelink team honored

Spacelink

NASA's pioneering Spacelink site—the space agency's first-ever virtual public library—will be honored March 15 with an award for aerospace education

NASA launched Spacelink (spacelink.nasa.gov/index.html) in 1988, before the World Wide Web existed, said Jerry Berg, a spokesman for the Marshall Space Flight Center, which hosts the site.

The interactive site, which connects educators and students to aeronautics and space information and resources, this week will receive the National Aeronautic Association's Frank G. Brewer Trophy for aerospace education.

"Spacelink is a key element in NASA's education program, and we appreciate this prestigious recognition of its entire community," said Frank Owens, director of NASA's education division in Washington, D.C.

The Brewer trophy, awarded annually since 1943, will be presented to NASA's Spacelink team during the National Congress on Aviation and Space Education in Minneapolis. It will be the first time in 21 years that the trophy has been presented to a team and not to an individual.

Berg said it's impossible to say if Spacelink was the government's first virtual library.

"Somebody in DOD probably had some kind of a library," he said. "There were bulletin boards for people to share information."

But Spacelink certainly had to be in the forefront of virtual libraries open to the public, he said.