DAILY SCIENTIFIC DEMANDS CONFLICT WITH GEOINFORMATICS NEEDS AT A YOUNG REPOSITORY

LacCore, the National Lacustrine Core Repository, curates thousands of meters of lake sediment cores and associated data and metadata. NSF mandates the release of initial core description data, as well as material from the cores themselves, two years from core collection. High-resolution digital core and smear slide images and lithological descriptions generated at LacCore provide a tremendous wealth of information for the limnogeological community. However, the limitations of the scientific staff's available time and programming skills retard the development of interoperable web design and highly functional databases. The complexity of these tasks is in conflict with the demands of the scientific support operations occurring continuously in the field and laboratory; the geoinformatics side more often suffers.