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[[underlined]] Air and Space Museum [[/underlined]].  Over the next five years, the Museum expects to bring its education, research, and exhibits activities more into balance.  Using its extensive biographic files, technical plans, and artifacts, present levels of historical research on aviation and space flight will be strengthened.  The Center for Earth and Planetary Studies will seek to expand its efforts in arid land remote sensing, comparative planetology, lunar geology and photo-imaging.  A reorganization of the Museum's departments and offices took place in FY 1980 and should assist in achieving these goals.  The new department of Space Sciences and Exploration has been formed to allow the museum to exploit through its research and exhibit programs the historical and technical achievements of not only the development of flight and of the manned space program, but new findings in the area of astronomy and other studies. The reorganization is geared to lend impetus to the Museum's research programs through development of collaborative publications, scholarly symposia, and journal writing projects.

The education programs of the Museum have been enhanced this past year through the completion of the new teacher resource and briefing facility.  This facility makes available a wide variety of aerospace instructional materials for teachers to take back for us in their classrooms, and provides space for a series of briefings, lectures, and demonstrations for visiting teachers and their students.  For the most part, the Museum's educational program is well-supported, but some increases will be sought in future years to expand publications, tours, and other outreach aspects of operations.

Collection inventory efforts are projected to be completed by the end of FY 1981.  This project, undertaken two or more years ago, has reduced storage requirements, created savings in curatorial time, and eliminated some duplications and gaps in the collections.  With the completion of the inventory, the Museum will direct efforts to building up its archival library of microfiche information on the collections, and to establishing video-disc systems for the photocollections.

The Museum building is now five years old.  It has accommodated 30,000 visitors daily in a remarkably good fashion.  Items, however, do wear out simply because of overuse (e.g., revolving doors, water fountain mechanisms, restroom valves, etc.).  These are being replaced on a routine basis, but it is imperative that sufficient resources be sought to maintain the building over time in a safe, attractive sate for the visitors.  The effect of ten million visitors annually will become more apparent and distressing, and the aging process of the building itself will require increased  manpower, furnishings (such as carpeting), and equipment.  Some further facilities upgrading will be required at Silver Hill, and these projects are described in the Facilities chapter of this document.

[[underlined]] Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies [[/underlined]].  The Center's environmental research program is designed to develop an understanding of how man's activities affect ecological systems, particularly where alterations in land use are involved.  To this end, the Center has constructed, with grant and runoff funding, a system for the measurement of the quality of land runoff and its effects on estuarine waters.  This is the only watershed research program in the costal United States, and the Bay Center has an excellent