Both the quality and quantity of images set this photo library apart. There are over 100,000 high resolution photos, videos, and artist renderings of anything and everything related to NASA and space. Each item has rich metadata describing the photo or video in full. It is all delivered through a simple search portal. There are some categories like the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, but you quickly realize that even these pages are simply delivering search results. With so many photos and videos, the possibilities are limited only by your search string.

This photo library is light years beyond other government photo libraries. And it reveals the value of NASA and Internet Archive's public—non-profit partnership model. NASA's agreement with Internet Archive in 2007 described the project as an information digitization project. Other agencies have recently formed digitization partnerships. But they have done so with private companies, and the public value from most of them has been underwhelming.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has formed several partnerships with corporations to digitize public records, but NARA agreed in all cases not to provide the newly-digital records online for 5 years. NARA bowed to the private companies' profit motive to control and to restrict access to that information.

However, NASA proved that the American people can have their cake and eat it too. Non-profit organizations have no profit motive to restrict access to information, so they are perfect partners to digitize public records. Other agencies should take this to heart and not sell out public access when digitizing their collections. NASA Images and the NASA-Internet Archive partnership show what can happen when the public and non-profit sectors work together on the Internet.