= 20 w 
INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND REMOTE SENSING 
COMMISSION VI 
Symposium held in Mainz, FR Germany, 22-25 September 1982 
  
THE ESA INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERYLLE 
Dr. Georges A. Proca 
Head Online Services 
ESA/IRS, Via Galileo Galilei, Frascati, 00044, Italy 
ABSTRACT 
"An overview of the ESA-IRS status today after 14 years experience in 
. online activities is given. 
The sectors covered by the daatabases currently online are described 
emphasising the international character of the sources and material 
contained. 
The ESA-IRS services, divided into online, offline, support and help 
services are detailed. Access techniques are presented together with 
brief indications on the capabilities of the ESA-QUEST software. 
Applications of the ESA-IRS capabilities to new forms of data retrieval 
including Videotex, time series manipulations, data transfer and 
private file creation are presented. Indications on curent research and 
development are given". 
I Overview of ESA-IRS status. 
The Information Retrieval Service of the European Space Agency has 
been in existence since 14 years and can therefore claim to be the 
oldest such Service in Europe. As it belongs to the European Space 
Agency, which is a creation of 11 European Member States, ESA-IRS 
has a unique character: it is inherently international in character 
and its functions are to provide scientific and technical 
information to the Agency's Establishments, to the industries and 
managers of its component Member States and to all searchers, 
engineers - worldwide - involved in scientific research. 
A recently published enquiry has shown that ESA-IRS was ranked first 
in Europe by online customers and ranked second worldwide. [ts 
current customer basis exceeds 3000 and there were some 24000 hours 
of online interrogation sold in 1981 (an annual growth rate of 12%). 
Bibliographic quotation : 
Proca, G.A. : The ESA Information Retrieval Service. In : Int.Archive of Photogrammetry, 
2*-VI, pp 29-37, Mainz 1982