During our lifetimes as geologists, we are blessed to see so many sites and work in a variety of countries and environments. We take notes and measurements, draw maps and sketches, and of course write reports with our findings and recommendations. We amass thousands of assay results and many meters of drill core logs. Our lives are scientists is significant, and we pour every ounce of our souls into the careers we enjoy so much.
The Legacy Collections aim to preserve and honour this work by curating donations of documents, maps, samples and even equipment and giving it a new lease of life. These collections are given to us when geologists retire, or are left in our care when someone passes away.
The information is then used in several ways:
As we digitize the collections, we also “mine” the information held in each report for valuable geological interpretations that can enhance known projects or lead to a rediscovery of long lost mineral showings. What has become apparent is that government filings, Geological Survey or other online resources often miss the subtleties of information collected, reporting only that which was relevant to a framework at the time. For example, of the first 280 British Columbia related documents we scanned, 22 contained new mineral showings that were not reported in any government filings. That is almost 1 in every 10 reports that contained novel data. Our collection currently sits at over 6,000 documents with a world-wide coverage, so the scope to make discoveries is amazing!
The map below shows the distribution of reports acquired for British Columbia that we have so far processed from the Legacy Collection. This distribution is changing and being updated all the time.
