Photo: Workshop participants, from left: Anne Grunow (USPRR), Iris Hardy (NRC Canada), Anders Noren (LacCore), Rusty Lotti Bond (LDEO), Robert Arko (LDEO), Bernard Miville (IODP-MI), Kerstin Lehnert (LDEO), Carla Moore (NGDC), Bobbi Conrad (OSU), Nick Pisias (OSU), Ellen Rosen (WHOI). Missing on photo: Carl Francis (Harvard), Yuangliang Liu (CIESIN), Kelly Stroker (NGDC), Sri Vinayagamoorthy (CIESIN)

The objective of the workshop was to define procedures for sample registration with SESAR in a way that they complement existing practices in sample collection, sample curation, and sample metadata management in the field and in the curatorial and academic environment. Workshop participants included curators of marine, lacustrine, and terrestrial core and rock repositories and museums, and data managers and system engineers of major digital sample catalogs. The group met for 1.5 days at the UCAR Center Green Facility in Boulder, CO, and engaged in highly dynamic discussions, addressing topics ranging from the design of forms for the capture and submission of sample metadata to the use of common vocabularies and classification schemes for geological samples to the development of an XML schema for sample metadata to the application of bar code printers and scanners in sample curation. The participants successfully agreed on a set of recommendations for best practices and procedures that will become available on the SESAR web site in April 2007 and will be presented at the 30th Anniversary Meeting of the Curator's Group in Boulder in September 2007.

Nearly 50,000 mineral specimens from the Mineralogical and Geological Museum at Harvard University have been registered at SESAR. The Mineralogical and Geological Museum holds vast geological collections that have been assembled since the late eighteenth century, and represent a legacy of vigorous research and teaching in various fields of geology including mineralogy, petrology, and mining geology. The Harvard mineral collection, acquired mostly by donation or purchase of private collections and individual specimens, is the most important of the collections, ranking among the world's finest due to its very broad representation, wealth of rare species, large number of specimens described in the scientific literature, and the quality of its display specimens.

Photo: Specimen of gold wires (distorted crystals) on quartz from Antioquia, Colombia (about 4 cm tall)

All DSDP and ODP holes, cores, core sections, and core samples listed in the Janus database , more than 3.5 Million objects in total, have been registered with SESAR and assigned IGSNs. Use of these unique sample identifiers will help achieve sample-based interoperability among data systems that contain cruise and post-cruise data for ODP samples (CHRONOS, Janus, SedDB, PetDB, CoreWall, Marine Geoscience Data System) and serve as a test-bed for SESAR for further interoperability development.

Publications that report data for DSDP and ODP samples should use the IGSNs for unique sample identification. IGSNs for DSDP and ODP samples can be downloaded from SESAR in lists organized by Leg. Download now.

Please note: Currently, only IGSNs for DSDP and ODP holes and cores can be searched via the SESAR sample catalog query. DSDP and ODP samples are not available through the search interface due to performance issues. This problem will be fixed soon.

  SESAR is now working with the USIO (Implementing Organization) of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program IODP to integrate sample registration procedures and the IGSN into IODP sample curation and data management.