THE ROLE OF FIELD TRIP GUIDEBOOKS IN FIELD-BASED GEOLOGIC RESEARCH: EXAMINING SIXTY YEARS OF NEIGC GUIDEBOOKS

“NEIGC has played a major role in promoting informal, constructive, even sometimes ‘fiery’, discussions on the outcrop that in the final analysis have opened minds, honed observations, and refined ideas.” (W. Bothner, NEIGC, 1988)

Outcrop discussions cannot be recaptured, but the accompanying New England Intercollegiate Geological Conference guidebooks have long been recognized as important, but often difficult to obtain, sources of information for those unable to actually participate in the original trips. In 2008 the University of New Hampshire Library began to digitize NEIGC field trip guidebooks. To date, materials from conferences held between the years 1920 and 1975 have been scanned. When metadata is complete, all will be available on the UNH Library website.

In examining guidebooks spanning many decades, changes in the conference are obvious. The evolution has been gradual, with the present format for trips beginning to take shape roughly in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on readily available guidebooks, numbers of trips per year increased from an average of 6.0 in the 1950s to 16.9 in the decade 2000-2009. In the same two time periods, the number of pages (excluding references) per trip grew from 8.6 to 19.0, and the average number of references per trip from 4.2 to 36.3. Throughout NEIGC’s existence, most trip leaders have been academics, as might be expected from the “intercollegiate” emphasis of the conference. In early years, single trip leaders predominated, whereas more recently trips frequently have two or more authors.

Trip descriptions preserve and document the field evidence for the author’s geologic interpretations, even when the outcrops themselves are destroyed or original field notes are lost. While retaining the road (or trail) logs that make these publications “guidebooks”, the accompanying articles provide more extensive geologic context. Many begin to resemble journal articles in format and content. NEIGC guidebooks remain “gray literature” in that they are not peer reviewed. However, through their inclusion in GeoRef, and with increased accessibility through digitization, these guidebooks will continue to serve as visible reminders of the continuing importance of field-based research and the discussions that ensue both on the outcrop and in other venues.