THE ALASKA GEOLOGIC MATERIALS CENTER OR THE LITTLE CORE REPOSITORY THAT COULD

The Alaska Geologic Materials Center (GMC) in Eagle River holds non-proprietary rock core and cuttings that represent nearly 13 million feet of exploration and production drilling in Alaska. Additionally, the collection holds more than 300,000 feet of diamond-drilled hard-rock mineral core; rock materials from more than 1,600 oil and gas exploratory or production wells; rock core from nearly 1,100 exploratory hard-rock mineral holes; and numerous surface rock samples. The collection also includes extensive geochemical data and processed material derived from this rock.

A geologist's ability to perform modern analyses on these unique samples is paramount for responsible development of the State's vast resources. It is critical that access to and protection of this valuable resource be improved and updated. GMC staff recently documented and indexed 70% of the hard-rock mineral core and continues to acquire box-level details for the entire oil and gas collection.

Although the main responsibility of the GMC is to preserve and ensure the safety of the material stored at the facility, it is equally important to make the material and derived data accessible to the public. GMC staff has been acquiring additional inventory details and performing quality control on the information stored in the ever-growing database. The GMC inventory is currently available as a Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file, an international standard used by the Open Geospatial Consortium and can be viewed with Google Earth, NASA World Wind, or Microsoft Bing Maps 3D geobrowsers. The next step is to provide users with a suite of online search tools to query the GMC inventory. Feedback from individuals or organizations involved in the oil and gas and minerals industry regarding these public data is strongly encouraged and will be critical in improving the user experience.