The Florida Geological Survey holds a collection of 300 historic field books, which contain historic information about Florida, including topography, vegetation, and historic mining operations. Additionally, the books contain information about geologic sampling, drillers' logs, lithologic descriptions, and laboratory notes. In 2019-2020, a grant through the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) - National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program (NGGDPP) was awarded to the FGS to preserve this collection of historic field books and notes from prior geologists, the oldest dating back to 1905. Over the life of the project, 242 field books were scanned, cropped, added with previously scanned books, and made publicly available. The following is a list of each sub-collection and a link to an index to books in the collection. Please note that the file sizes range from 1.0 MB to 100MB.
This is the oldest collection and includes notes on topography, vegetation, clay and phosphate mining, water supply inventories and notes from historic conferences. These were either directly penned by E.H. Sellards and/or Herman Gunter or they recount the field work of these geologists. All but one book in this collection were transcribed. These transcriptions are available by request to the FGS Library.
This collection includes field notes by J.H.C. Martens, Roland McMillan Harper, M.K. Cooke, and Olin G. Bell as well as additional preliminary notes by E.H. Sellards and Herman Gunter. These books date back from 1899-1930 and include notes about outcrops, well data, elevations and mining.
This collection includes data from elevation surveys run throughout the state, many of which measure the elevations to drilled wells.
This collection includes field notes by W.R. Ogelsby, Felipe Pontigo, James Balsillie and more recent geologists. These books are from 1960-2000 and include notes from gravity readings, geophysical logging, outcrop locations and karst investigations.
This collection includes the log books from the FGS drilling operations program, dating back from 1989 to present.
This collection includes notes of field and lab work from state and federal funded projects, including USGS Estuary Studies, MMS/BOEM Offshore Sand Search Projects, UIC Geochemical Studies and Florida Springs Initiative Projects.
