Geological Materials Working Collections
The Geological Materials Repository Working Collections consist of many individual scientific collections that have been obtained for current, future, or completed research purposes by researchers, teams, and science centers throughout the USGS.
Geological Materials Repository Working Collections Mission
The mission of the GMR Working Collections is to support the proper management of scientific working collections broadly within the USGS by:
- Serving as a centralized repository for geological materials obtained through research activities by USGS scientists, teams, and science centers;
- Providing storage of these materials while they support ongoing and future USGS research and further the USGS mission to ensure the preservation of these materials. These storage arrangements are managed through agreements with entities responsible for the collection (e.g., USGS office, science center, or individual);
- Providing assistance to USGS scientists, teams, and science centers to better manage their scientific collections. This assistance may include inventorying, tracking, evaluating, and documenting the materials and associated data and metadata to promote and extend the value of these resources for continued scientific inquiry; and
- Providing access to the materials for the materials’ owners as well as others with permission from the owners to promote usage of the materials within the scientific community.
It is the vision of the GMR Working Collections to support collections management best practices throughout the Bureau while helping USGS scientists manage, maintain, and make scientific working collections available for future use to support the mission of the USGS overall. It is the goal of the GMR to make USGS collections FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and facilitate access to the collections housed by the GMR.