UC Davis and Internet Archive Make Important Geologic and Water Resources Available

By Karen Andrews, Head, Physical Sciences and Engineering Library, UC Davis

As part of UC’s mass digitization scanning efforts, the library of the University of California, Davis, in consultation with the Government Information Librarians (GILS) bibliographers group, and the Internet Archive is currently engaged in two important digitization projects.  The first is the digitization of the Bulletin of the California Division of Mines and Geology and the second is the digitization of the Bulletin of the California Department of Water Resources.  With over 1,100 issues, both these resources have information that will be of interest to scholars, professionals, and the general public.

The Bulletin of the California Division of Mines and Geology covers the years 1888 to 2001.  These volumes have basic information, including maps, about the geology of California on both statewide and local levels.  They also contain information about the state’s mineral resources, including gold deposits and mining.  There are geologic guidebooks, some covering locales that may no longer be accessible.  Some volumes cover geologic topics like urban geology from a statewide view.

The digitization project for the Bulletin of the California Department of Water Resources covers the years 1922 to 2004.  These volumes contain huge amounts of data concerning nearly all aspects of water in California.  There is information on water law, water projects, groundwater, water quality, flooding, and water conditions.  Very often the volumes contain maps and fold-outs.  Some volumes describing major floods of the past are of great historical interest.

The documents come from the collection of the UC Davis Physical Sciences & Engineering Library, with a few volumes supplied by the UC Berkeley Geology Library to fill in gaps.

The scanning is being conducted by the Internet Archive in San Francisco.  Funding for the scanning project is provided by Kahle/Austin Foundation and Omidyar Network.  The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Upon completion (scheduled for late spring) the scanned collections will be immediately available to the public via the Internet Archive web site at http://www.archive.org/.  To view documents completed to date, conduct a search for "caminesgeo" or try "cawaterres" to retrieve examples.

Eventually, there will be links to the Internet Archive images from within the UC Davis Harvest Catalog and the Melvyl Catalog.