Summary Report of the Natural Resources Research Institute’s Contribution to the Interagency Minerals Information Indexing Project

Abstract

The purpose of this interagency project is to provide public online access, in standardized form, to the multitude of reports, documents, and maps produced or held by the three public minerals agencies in Minnesota, i.e., the Minerals Division of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR), the Minnesota Geological Survey (MGS), and the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI). Initial work on the indexing project is focused in the area of non-ferrous minerals to better serve this exploration industry. The scope of NRRI’s part in the project extends to indexing all published reports on nonferrous minerals projects undertaken by NRRI since its inception in 1983. These include 21 reports published at NRRI and 3 reports published at NRRI’s Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory (CMRL). The reports are listed in Appendix A and referenced by NRRI report number. Report numbers beginning with “CMRL” are held at NRRI’s Coleraine facility (Coleraine Minerals Research Laboratory, Natural Resources Research Institute, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Box 188, Coleraine, MN 55722). In addition to indexing its non-ferrous reports, NRRI is responsible for starting a Locality Thesaurus—a listing of geological names and terms associated with a physical locality, such as “Virginia Horn,” “Duluth Gabbro Complex,” “Vermilion District,” and “Camp Rivard Fault.” This thesaurus will be used as a foundation from which a fully cross-referenced locality thesaurus for the State of Minnesota will be built. Multiple names applied to any particular “locality” are crossreferenced. Initial efforts are concentrated in the non-ferrous area, but include ferrous and glacial locality terms as well.