I was very excited to see an announcement from NASA’s Communication Support Services Center in my inbox today, because only good things ever come from that office. Today’s e-mail directed me to the download site for a new NASA e-book, Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography Part 2, 1992–2011, compiled by Malinda K. Goodrich, Alice R. Buchalter, and Patrick M. Miller of the Federal Research Division, Library of Congress.
So exciting! If you’ve ever looked at the 1992 edition of Toward a History of the Space Shuttle An Annotated Bibliography compiled by Roger D. Launius and Aaron K. Gillette, you probably have a sense of what’s in this new edition. In short: everything. I’m reproducing the table of contents for you here, just in case you doubt my word (click on each image to make them larger).
Table of Contents, Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography, 1992
Table of Contents, Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography Part 2, 1992–2011, 2012
Any book, article, or bulletin even remotely related to the Space Shuttle program is likely to be cited in one or the other volume. The annotations cover popular publications (Popular Science, Washington Post), professional journals (Nature, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society), and technical/government reports (U.S. General Accounting Office, U.S. Congress).
Some neat things about the second volume: it opens with a list of abbreviations, a necessary tool when you’re reading NASA; it contains annotations for DVDs, so you can get your space on in front of the television; it covers children’s books, so you can get you kids in on it; and most usefully, the new volume has embedded links that connect to the parallel section in the first volume.
