BGS’s National Geoscience Data Centre releases over 8000 technical reports

Over 8000 technical reports have been released by BGS’s National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC), comprising internal unpublished works created outside the formal publishing and distribution system. They pre-date the current report series and, for any given title, only a few copies were produced for deposit in BGS libraries or offices, making them traditionally hard to find and access. They cover the full spectrum of BGS activities and subjects, including:

• onshore geology, including the important ‘geological notes and local details’ (essentially, sheet descriptions for 1:10 560/1:10 000 maps)
• marine geology
• minerology and petrology
• mineral resources
• global seismology
• geomagnetism

The 16 series and just under 100 subseries can now be navigated via the publication viewer; more detailed notes on this complex set of reports are available on Earthwise. A search facility for authors and titles is also available in the application. The file sizes of technical reports are much smaller than formal BGS publications, so they have been made available as PDF downloads only.

This first technical report release represents BGS’s non-confidential reports. A second project is underway to review confidential reports with a view to a future release.

The release of these reports demonstrates BGS’s continued commitment to providing open access to geoscience data of value to the nation.  These reports, created by BGS during the latter half of the past century and now all in digital form, contain a wealth of geological information and knowledge that is now easier to access and utilise.

Alison Steven, data operations and governance manager (NGDC).