CREATING THE DIGITAL COLLECTION OF WILLIAM E. DAVIES AT THE USGS LIBRARY

During the first half of the 20^th Century, the United States undertook numerous Antarctic expeditions that provided critical advancements in geology. The scientists and explorers on these expeditions returned with troves of data and pictures that may yield further discoveries; however, many of these archived collections are currently available in print form only, limiting access and decreasing the overall utility of these collections. We therefore focused our work on digitizing the collection of William E. Davies, a USGS geologist present on the USS Atka’s Antarctic expedition of 1954-55. The purpose of our project was to examine, inventory, scan, and upload his documents and photos to create a comprehensive database. We compiled his notes, photos and maps into Sciencebase complete with accompanying metadata. In addition we sought to create a collation of data by linking historical field data to current field work being documented. Scientists may be able to see changes in the Antarctic coastline, the level of sea ice as well as continental ice sheet levels using repeat photography and data collected in the field. This information and the tools used to create these integrated datasets are essential to the scientific community. In addition, educators can use this as a tool in the classroom. The process of data integration, linkage, and synthetization can be applied to science as a whole. We are doing a crucial part in preserving science, and at the same time have made historical scientific data and observations readily available to the community.