Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

The Corporate Administrative Records Collection of Geoscience Australia (GA) is a bi fold collection; consisting of electronic/digital documents and records in physical paper format. The digital collection consists of electronic information, which may be "born digital" (created using computer technology) or converted into digital form from their original format (e.g. scans of paper documents). These records are created by all GA employees and are evidence of business conducted by GA and its predecessors. The location of these digital records is in TRIM (electronic document management system). This product treats documents and records in the same way, so that end users perform the same task on all items that are stored in the system, irrespective of whether the item is a document or is to be declared as a record. The digital records can be captured in any format; e.g. excel document, word document, pdf document, emails, etc. When a user saves a document for the first time in TRIM they are prompted for metadata, which is then used to create the record.

Geoscience data standards as a field of research may come as a surprise to many geoscientists, who probably think of it as a dull peripheral issue, of little relevance to their domain. However, the subject is gaining rapidly in importance as the information revolution begins to take hold, as ultimately billions of dollars worth of information are at stake. In this article we take a look at what has happened recently in this field, where we think it is heading, and AGSO's role in national geoscience standards.

It is impractical for a single agency in Australia to hold responsibility for maintaining a national landslide database. Geoscience Australia has successfully demonstrated the benefits of adopting information management strategies as one solution in bringing local, regional and national scale landslide data together. In the first time that networked service oriented interoperability has been applied to a natural hazards domain, Australia now has an up-to-date central landslide database that makes full use of diverse data across three levels of government . The approach is centred upon a 'common data model' that addresses aspects of landslides captured by different agencies. The methodology brings four distinct components together: a landslide application schema; a landslide domain model; web service implementations and a user interface. Sharing and exchanging data more efficiently through an interoperable approach ensures that full value is made of available information, and that responsibility for collecting and maintaining this data is shared across all agencies. Specific-purpose data not only continues to serve the needs of individual database custodians, but also now serves a broader need. Such a system establishes the foundation for a very powerful and coordinated information resource in Australia through its ability to collate and characterise large volumes of information, and provides a suitable basis for greater investment in data collection. At a minimum the pilot project provides Australia with a framework for a centralised national landslide inventory, which can connect other available landslide databases. There is also considerable capacity for this approach to provide State Governments with a simple way to compile and maintain their own state-wide databases, and to extend the approach across other natural hazard databases and integrate data from other domains.

part-page article on stratigraphic issues

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

Legacy product - no abstract available

The Corporate Administrative Records Collection of Geoscience Australia (GA) is a bi fold collection; consisting of electronic/digital documents and records in physical paper format. GA's corporate administrative records in physical format are created by the Records Management Unit upon request from staff members when their needs meet specific criteria. The files themselves are bound in cardboard folders and labelled and bar-coded according to their respective classification level and metadata information. Individually, the files are a detailed narrative of specific business activities; describing all of the administrative processes that occurred during an activity. The collection is organised according to a year series system; a method which has been constant throughout GA's evolution. The collection also consists of inherited physical records from various government departments. These include the AFFA series from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Australia and the UB Series, sourced from the Uranium Branch. In collaboration with the relevant government departments, GA acceded custody of these series, and they are now managed in juxtaposition with the entire GA collection.