As a statewide research institution that’s existed for 185 years, the Indiana Geological and Water Survey has amassed literal tons of data.

Until the past few months, though, only a handful of people—mostly current or former IGWS employees and stone or oil/gas industry professionals—were able to easily access some types of data digitally or knew they existed.

A link to IGWS Digital Collections—also known as ResourceSpace—has now been added to the IGWS website. (The direct URL is https://data.igws.indiana.edu.) The extensive digital holdings include images, maps, documents, publications, and geoscience data relating to the geology of Indiana, as well as cultural heritage material connected to the state’s natural environment. The system currently contains 45,000 to 50,000 items—more than 4 terabytes of data—with the total growing daily. Items are sorted into “featured collections” to aid in navigation and browsing, and a variety of search options are available to help users find something specific.

Users can sign up for a free IGWS Digital Collections account if they want to gather and save their own collections of items for later use, but an account is not required to view and download.

The building of the IGWS Digital Collections portal began in earnest in 2020 when the Survey received a data preservation grant from the United States Geological Survey. Will Knauth was hired as digital collections manager that November and began taking stock of all data housed on various servers and on paper. One server was beginning to fail around that time, and a longtime employee involved in scanning and archiving, Barbara Hill, was preparing to retire. Another early challenge was that Knauth’s background is in archives and cultural heritage technology, not geological sciences. “I was trying to get my head around how this system could be set up to be useful to the Survey. And there was also an element of, ‘What do geologists do?’” he remembered.

For decades, the Survey had been divided into research sections such as coal and industrial minerals, geochemistry, and glacial geology, and the prevailing system had been to silo data in filing cabinets or in digital folders with limited permissions for access. Without a more accessible and searchable system, IGWS researchers might not know that earlier data existed that could be valuable to a current project. “There was a lot of potential to duplicate work,” Knauth said.

Data accessibility also was extremely limited outside the Survey with many items being “basically invisible to the those in the taxpaying public and all the other current and potential audiences,” Knauth said. Various databases, map layers, and publications were searchable and some were downloadable on the IGWS website, but there was no central place where all available data types could be viewed and searched, including raw data that wasn’t published, like core photos, drillers’ logs, gamma logs, and geologists’ field notebooks.

Many other state surveys have been working through the same challenges, Knauth said, citing conversations at a recent data preservation conference. “I would say we’re ahead of the curve,” he said. “I think we probably have a lot more to do, but I actually feel really pleased with what we’ve done on it so far.”

Knauth said the plan is to link IGWS Digital Collections to other repositories IU maintains to help make items more discoverable. A related project has been underway for nearly a year to upload all historical IGWS publications to IUScholarWorks; those titles also are searchable in IGWS Digital Collections.

Polly Sturgeon, education and outreach coordinator for the IGWS, is excited about what IGWS Digital Collections can do for school-age researchers. “We have so much content, so much material that would be useful for any school kid who ever does a report on Indiana geology. Finally, they have access to pictures and figures to put on their presentations. Every college student doing a thesis, there’s so much background information,” she said.

“I’ve wanted a place to house our digital collections for ages, and we’re so very excited; there’s just a lot of possibilities for the public to interact with our materials.”

Though not all 185 years of data has not been scanned and added to IGWS Digital Collections yet, the system is robust enough to release now with the expectation that it will grow and change over time.

IGWS staff welcome feedback through this brief survey.

At least a dozen times each month, Indiana residents reach out to IGWS staff asking for help identifying a rock – usually a suspected meteor which isn’t actually a meteor. Last month, an IU student emailed us to see if anyone could identify a specimen that a neighbor found.

Polly Sturgeon, a geologist who’s also the IGWS education and outreach coordinator, had some good—and unusual—news: It’s a mastodon tooth, and the mastodon just happens to be Indiana’s new state fossil.

“It is significantly weathered, but the ridging and shape are very indicative of mastodon molars,” Sturgeon explained.

The IGWS education collection, which Sturgeon shows to school groups and other visitors, includes a mastodon molar and a jawbone with teeth:

The E-Geo News may soon be moving to a new production platform which will require us to rebuild our current email distribution list. Please click the link below to take a very short, four-question survey so that you can continue to receive the newsletter:

Answer the E-Geo News reader survey

Thank you!

Next week, Oct. 10-14, is Earth Sciences Week in Indiana, formalized by a proclamation from Gov. Eric Holcomb (at right). On Thursday and Friday, Oct. 13 and 14, the IGWS Learning Lab will celebrate this annual international event. This year's theme is "Earth Science for a Sustainable World." All are welcome to visit from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to learn about Indiana’s role in sustainable geoscience, explore the state’s rock record, and create art inspired by the planet’s ability to support life.

Other events this month include:

• Saturday, Oct. 8: Mastodon art contest deadline. (There’s still time to enter!)

• Tuesday, Oct. 18: GeoCreate at the Learning Lab

• Thursday, Oct. 20: Great ShakeOut drill

• Saturday, Oct. 22: IU Science Fest in the Dunn’s Woods area of the IU Bloomington campus

• Saturday, Oct. 29: Learning Lab Spooktacular

Public access to the IGWS core and chipset library closed Sept. 30 so that staff and contractors can prepare to move the collections to a temporary storage facility north of Bloomington. The extensive library—dating back to 1948 and including more than 50 miles of bedrock core samples alone—must be moved out of the Cardinal Metal Finishing warehouse (a.k.a. Otis) by the end of November because of an expiring lease.

While the move is happening and while the collections are in storage, physical core samples and chipsets will not be available for public inspection. However, some data from those cores are accessible through digital means; contact Archivist and Collections Manager Jenna Lanman for guidance and assistance. IGWS researchers have arranged for core samples they need for current projects such as STATEMAP and carbon sequestration to be stored in other areas where they can work with them.

When the core and chipset library will reopen to the public has yet to be determined. A location and funding to develop a long-term facility have not been finalized.

The core library fulfills an essential part of the IGWS’s mission to “collect and preserve geologic specimens and data.” “Everything we need to know about Indiana’s geology, from its mineral and energy wealth to available water, is below our feet,” said Todd Thompson, IGWS director and state geologist.

A space odyssey

Before its move to Otis in 2018, the core library was housed in four buildings on campus, two of which the IGWS does not have access to anymore: 12th and Woodlawn (currently the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture & Design Wood and Metal Shops), the Ideal Laundry building at 12th and Park (demolished for safety reasons in the summer of 2019), the IGWS Geologic Materials Testing facility (GMT) at 11th and Forrest, and the basement of the Geology Building at 10th and Cottage Grove. Part of GMT was demolished in the fall of 2019. Even after a major, two-and-a-half-year renovation to the Geology Building where the main IGWS offices and labs are, the IGWS has 19,847 fewer square feet for specimen storage than it did four years ago.

Meanwhile, the core library’s holdings have continued to grow as researchers collect new samples to complete work associated with USGS/AASG STATEMAP and other grant-funded projects. In 2021 alone, more than 5,000 linear feet of material was added to the library.

Read more...

From the mid-1950s to the late-1980s, the Indiana Geological Survey (as this institute used to be called) educated visitors to the Indiana State Fair about geologic resources through a elaborate, 3-D exhibits. The Survey’s photography or drafting and photography department was responsible for building these displays and hauling them up to the fairgrounds each summer. Of course, being photographers, they documented many of them on film.

New IGWS Digitization Imaging Specialist Kristen Wilkins has been going through various photo drawers of negatives stored in the archive rooms and adding items to the IGWS Digital Collections portal. One of the newest and most complete collections is “State Fair Exhibits (1950s-1980s)” which includes 27 folders of images of these displays. Most images were shot by George Ringer, IGWS photographer (and sometimes photography department of one) from 1947 to ‘84. He was succeeded by Barbara Hill, who retired last year but is still a volunteer affiliate.

Wilkins, herself a photographer and artist, has been enjoying the discoveries she’s making in the archive drawers and the trips back in time to different techniques. “Over these four decades, photography changed a lot, and those changes are reflected in the negatives Ringer created,” she explained. In the earlier years, “black-and-white film was considered the most stable, so there are fewer color images from that time.” Film size also varied from 4- by 5-inch sheet film to 35mm roll film.

State fair exhibit themes tended to promote an aspect of the Survey’s service to Indiana, like the gypsum industry, the Trenton Oil Fields, or the limestone industry. A couple times, Survey staff brought equipment and vehicles and did demonstrations on the fairgrounds, but most exhibits were more static, some featuring paintings and drawings by Survey artist-draftsman Robert Judah. Wilkins’ favorite exhibit is from 1966, Indiana's Industrial and Natural Resources, because of its interesting geometry and content. “It appears to be in a hexagonal booth, with each pie-slice-side emphasizing a different theme, like industry, history, or mining.”

View this featured collection at this link.

• Research geologist Ashley Douds earned awards for two recent papers prepared for the 2021 AAPG Eastern Section meeting. She and coauthor Randy Blood won the A.I. Levorsen Memorial Best Paper Award for “The Marcellus Shale: Geologic Controls on Reservoir Quality and Geochemical Aspects of Future Potential Resources.” Blood, Douds, and Milly Wright also won the Pittsburgh Geological Society Award for Best Paper on Appalachian Geology for “A Proposed Model for Quantifying Critical Mineral Occurrence from Unconventional Sources: An Example from the Marcellus Shale, Appalachian Basin, USA.”

• Research scientist Babak Shabani left employment with the IGWS on Sept. 12 to take a geoscientist job with INTERA, a consulting firm in downtown Bloomington. His work with the Indiana Water Balance Network has been transferred to IGWS research scientist Ginger Davis.

• The IGWS is seeking to hire a database developer and two research geologists. Click here to view the job postings and apply.

• IGWS Director Todd Thompson and research affiliate Brian Keith led a fieldtrip on Sept. 24 for the Association for Women Geoscientists to see Salem Limestone at several notable Bloomington-area locations.

• The IGWS Learning Lab hosted about 60 public school students from all over the state on Sept. 12, about 85 home school students from the Fishers area on Oct. 5, and the September group is scheduled to return in November. Some students from northern Indiana even came early and spent the night in Bloomington, said Polly Sturgeon, the IGWS education and outreach coordinator. Since it opened in June, the Learning Lab has served approximately 700 first-time visitors.

• Sturgeon and Collections Intern Amanda Wollenweber provided geology activities at a Girl Scouts of Central Indiana event at the Indiana State Museum on Sept. 24.

• Research scientist Isaac Allred, Sturgeon, and Wollenweber will represent the IGWS at the Geological Society of America Connects 2022 conference Oct. 9-12 in Denver, Colo. Allred will present on his Ph.D. research relating to detrital zircon U-Pb signatures in the Appalachians; Sturgeon will talk about efforts to convey Indiana’s stone belt geoheritage; and Wollenweber, a master’s student, will talk about her capstone project using StoryMaps to meld geology education and museum curation.

• IGWS research scientist Ginger Davis met a class of seventh- and eighth-graders from a Fishers Montessori school at Goose Pond in Sullivan County on Sept. 8 to help teach lessons on water and geology.

• Davis attended the Indiana Water Summit and the national One Water Summit in September to bring a broader understanding of the interconnectivity among all elements of the hydrologic cycle within our communities. “Bringing the ‘One Water’ perspective to Indiana would link water in all places to community goals, quantity, quality, and resiliency for all Hoosiers,” she said.

• Davis will offer groundwater education at Owen County Water Day on Saturday, Oct. 8 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the BBP Water Corporation, 256 W. Clay St. in Spencer.

• IGWS research affiliate Maggie Sullivan, the Lake Monroe watershed coordinator, was quoted in a Sept. 1 Herald-Times story about why Bloomington’s water tastes the way it does.

• Davis will be the keynote speaker for the Lake Monroe Watershed Summit on Saturday, Oct. 22 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Brown County Public Library, 205 Locust Lane in Nashville, talking about the importance of watershed work in protecting drinking water.

• The Indiana Uplands Tap Water Co-Design Workshop will take place Thursday, Oct. 20 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the West Baden Springs Resort. It will present preliminary project findings and bring together water stakeholders to formulate steps to support the region's tap water. Davis will be participating as a co-investigator in this Center for Rural Engagement (CRE) project. She also will present a talk about this project with water and wastewater operators at the Alliance of Indiana Rural Water Fall Conference in Fort Wayne Oct. 25-27.

The Indiana Geological and Water Survey, a longstanding institute of Indiana University, conducts research; surveys the state; collects and preserves geologic specimens and data; and disseminates information to contribute to the mitigation of geologic hazards and the wise stewardship of the energy, mineral, and water resources of Indiana.

• To join the monthly E-Geo News mailing list, please click here.

• To ask a question of IGWS staff or suggest an E-Geo News topic, email scliffo@iu.edu.