Earlier this month, senior Geological Sciences major Amanda Lanik presented her work creating a digital catalog at the Geological Society of America annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Amanda used the free open source digital content platform Omeka to create an online catalog of the rock samples used to teach petrology, the study of the origin and composition of rocks. The Omeka platform is quite versatile and has been used for many digital library projects around the world.
Working with geological sciences faculty and Milne Library staff, Amanda designed the site template, added rock data and uploaded pictures of the samples.
In her GSA presentation, Amanda described how the new catalog can be searched by rock name, time period or description. Users can also browse individual rock suites and can find samples from particular locations by selecting locations on a map.
In the future, this online collection can be used by teachers and students to create custom collections of materials and make direct connections between rocks in the Geneseo collection and the geoscience literature.
The Geneseo Geosciences Collections website
The growing online collection can be viewed at the Geneseo Geosciences Collections site. The abstract of Amanda’s presentation, as well as additional links can also be found online.
Dr. Dori Farthing (Geological Sciences) and Bonnie Swoger (Milne Library) served as advisors on the project, with technical assistance from Milne Library’s Corey Ha and Joe Easterly.
