Updates on The Online Archiving Facilities (OLAF) Capabilities

The On-Line Archiving Facility (OLAF) is a web application that has been helping users to submit data to NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS) for 20 years. PDS4 archive standards brought additional complexity and may be intimidating to learn. OLAF is designed so that a user is not required to learn the details of PDS4 or to maintain a current knowledge of the archiving standards. With just the knowledge of their data, a user can output properly-formatted and PDS4-compliant XML product labels for any OLAF supported data type.

OLAF works by creating a flexible, step-by-step user interface for uploading data and documents, adding its metadata, referencing instruments or other literature, and submitting for review. OLAF includes special workflows for each of its supported data types so users never need to learn more than necessary to archive data. This also ensures that everyone is able to create a valid, standardized PDS4 bundle with the required metadata, without digging through standards documentation.

OLAF has been recently updated to accept more data types such as SPICE kernels. In addition, new features such as sharing archive packages and the ability to save unfinished submissions have been created to improve user experience.

OLAF also has powerful features available for users who are more knowledgable about PDS4, including the ability to include additional keywords from Discipline Dictionaries or even create their own custom project dictionary.