Tell Me About It: Saving the Context of Archived Military Imagery

摘要

Defense Media Activity (DMA) is the Department of Defense's (DoD) direct line of communication for news and information to U.S. forces worldwide. The agency informs DoD audiences, entertains DoD audience overseas, trains Public Affairs and Visual Information professionals, and manages the DoD's visual information. Defense Imagery Management Operations Center (DIMOC) provides DoD enterprise-level visual information services including operational support, digitization, storage, access, records management of the Department's visual content, and accessions to the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Since the mid-1990s, DIMOC has sought to digitally catalog, archive and make public millions of relevant still and video images taken by Department of Defense (DoD) photographers around the world. The images depict everything from mundane 'day-in-the-life' events to combat operations; many of the cataloged images will find their way into National Archives collections. In addition to sharing unclassified images with the American public, DIMOC is also tasked with ensuring current operational imagery is available to decision-makers at all levels of the DoD. The purpose of this paper is to describe in detail the improvements to our processes as well as the challenges that remain, and how DIMOC has evolved to meet the challenges of preserving our nation's military pictorial history.