MAKING THE PAST COME ALIVE: BRINGING LEVERETT & TAYLOR & MONOGRAPH 53 TO THE 21ST CENTURY

Among the great challenges of current geoscience information are the questions of deciding what information will be digitally preserved, in what format, and what types of access can be made available.

In 1999, the Geology Library at Michigan State University received a collection of letters and reports written by Frank Leverett and Frank Taylor. Dating between 1890 and 1937, the collection includes correspondence between Leverett and Taylor, as well as letters written by other glaciologists. The collection also includes many of Taylor's handwritten reports. In addition to this very unique resource, the Geology Library has discovered a small group of detailed field maps for various quadrangles in Michigan that relate directly to some of the areas mapped by Leverett. Since 2000, the Geology Library has also acquired copies of Leverett's field notebooks for Michigan and a series of paintings that show the recession of the glaciers across Michigan.

In addition to preserving this unique but disparate group of collections, it is the objective of the Geology Library to explore ways to make these collections accessible to researchers. The ultimate goal would be a database that would allow glaciologists and geomorphologists access to the information collected by Leverett & Taylor in the production of Monograph 53. Ideally the theoretical design of such a database would be more than archival in nature. It should permit correlated access to all parts of the information base by location (a multi-tier field location structure), by date, and by name of glacial feature.