Every organization has images of incidents they've been involved with, including 35 mm slides, photographs, negatives, digital camera files, graphics from this presentation or that, PowerPoint files, etc. What does an organization do with these after the fact? Is there a central repository? Who takes care of them? How do I find them again? These are very valid questions whether an organization has been involved in incidents for one year or twenty-five years. NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration (NOAA OR&R) has been taking pictures of incidents since December 1976 at the ARGO MERCHANT oil spill in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Since that time, roughly 20,000 pictures have been taken. Before 1995, there was very little organization and even sketchier access to the images. Today, more than 14,000 are available as digital files and can be searched through the use of an image database. The process of getting from very little access to near full access has been daunting at times but is well worth the effort.

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