With the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and potential future funding for activities in the act there exists an unprecedented opportunity to inventory, archive, and preserve geologic and geophysical data collected by numerous organizations for the past 150 years. Section 351 of the Energy Policy Act directs the Secretary of the Interior, through the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), “to carry out a National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program” which is comprised of “State agencies that elect to be part of the system and agencies within the Department of the Interior that maintain geological and geophysical data and samples.” Section 351 also states that “the Secretary may not designate a State agency as a component of the data archive system unless that agency is the agency that acts as the geological survey in the State.”
The Vision
The USGS envisions a national network of cooperating geoscience materials and data repositories that are operated independently yet guided by common standards, procedures, and protocols for metadata. The holdings of all collections will be widely accessible through a common and mirrored Internet-based catalog, the National Digital Catalog. The holdings of the individual repositories will complement each other to preserve the geoscience assets of the Nation and serve as a comprehensive source of geoscience data and materials to serve national needs today and in the future.
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