ACCESSING TWO CENTURIES OF SCIENCE, THROUGH THE NATIONAL GEOLOGIC MAP DATABASE

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Association of American State Geologists are mandated by Congress to provide a National Geologic Map Database (NGMDB, http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/) of standardized, spatial geoscience information. In this partnership, collaboration occurs with the private sector, universities, and geological survey agencies in other countries. While working together on this Database and the standards that support it (http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/lnfo/standards/), the state geological surveys and USGS have improved their ability to deliver geologic maps and related products to their users.

The NGMDB system is a hybrid -- some aspects are centralized and some are distributed, with the map information held by various cooperators. At the NGMDB website, users can browse and query the U.S. Geologic Names Lexicon (GEOLEX) and the Geoscience Map Catalog (containing citations and links to >87,000 publications by >630 publishers, many containing GIS data and map images), and obtain access to the source information wherever it resides. The NGMDB project is now engaged in a major effort to redesign the underlying database and the Web interface, in order to provide better access to a wider array of geoscience information. In particular, we are focusing on creating, managing, and delivering scanned images of geologic maps, the U.S. Geologic Names Committee notes and index card catalogs, and unpublished paleontologic and other reports. Some of this content, both published and unpublished, is from the 19th century, and represents a fascinating and informative resource for future scientific studies.