Dr. Gibson's interesting request for an
'historical artifact', a template once
used by the Canadian Geological Survey,
has me wondering about the fate of such
documents. (This one would seem of value
to those who examine the maps & reports
made using them.)
Please excuse this long letter, which
just asks the fate of the field books
from geological surveys.
In the US, the National Research Council
has written a preliminary draft of a
report warning of the frightening rate
of destruction of primary geological
data:
> Geoscience Collections and Data: National Resources in Peril
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10348.html?send
Rocks, cores, field books, &c, collected
often at great expense, are being
discarded for lack of storage space.
(This bodes poorly for those rich in
theory but poor in grants, who
re-interpret these data collected by
others.)
It was announced in GEO-METAMORPHISM
that The British Columbia Ministry of
Energy and Mines is soon to eliminate
their regional mapping for lack of
funds. (It was on this mailing list that
I asked the fate of older microscopes
with Nicol prisms, and no one really
knew.) What will happen to the
specimens, field notes, & maps?
The literature on techniques of mapping
is sparse. When an undergraduate in
Nevada, I made a pilgrimage to Colorado
to study the field notebooks of
geologists retired from the US
Geological Survey, kept in Denver. Many
of the finest field geologists worked
for government surveys. Americans
remember, from individual State Surveys,
the work of Hitchcock in New Hampshire,
Chamberlain in Wisconsin, and we
Californians remember the work of
geologists from Clarence King to Thomas
Dibblee.
Geology is a young science. Has the loss
of primary geological data included
field books and original maps of surveys
by university & government geologists?
Some of the field notes of Adam Sedgwick
I once saw at Cambridge University. Have
other universities and surveys preserved
field books & field maps from their
employees' mapping projects?
Respectfully,
Bruce Bathurst
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