JUST DIGITIZE IT! : THE J. WILLARD MARRIOTT LIBRARY 'S ENDEAVOR TO BRING GEOLOGICAL SCHOLARSHIP TO THE WORLD

The need to organize, preserve, and share the geoscience materials available at the University of Utah motivated the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Geospatial Information Committee to begin a project of digitizing the University of Utah’s geological theses and their associated maps. This presentation describes the process and results of one library’s efforts to share its geologic scholarship with the world.

As a pilot project, the library’s Geospatial Information Committee compiled a list of the geology theses created by University of Utah students during the years 1950-1975. Using this list of ninety-three theses and associated maps, the library’s institutional repository staff collected the materials for digitizing. The Institutional Repository Department scanned the texts, while the oversized maps were digitized by the library’s Digital Technologies Department. The resulting files were added to USpace (the University of Utah’s institutional repository), bringing each complete thesis together once and for all in a digital environment.

While the digitization project progressed, the Geospatial Information Committee enlisted the assistance of the library’s Geospatial Information Specialist, in collaboration with the Utah Geological Survey, to georeference the map images and create files which can be utilized for 3-D viewing and spatial analysis using GIS software. As a final step, these files will be included in USpace and linked to their corresponding thesis for users to download and manipulate in GIS programs or view in Google Earth.

What began as a project of the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Geospatial Information Committee to improve access to geological scholarship has evolved into a multi-departmental endeavor to not only make the material easily accessible, but interactive as well.