Curators of sea floor and lakebed samples celebrate 25 years of service

Abstract

Research on marine geological and lake sediment benefits from community repository facilities that are supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) at eight U.S. institutions. These facilities house sediment cores, sediment trap samples, and sea floor rocks, and distribute data and materials for national and international scientific use. For more than 30 years, in partnership with participating universities, NSF has provided support for these community service facilities, recognizing that storage and distribution of these unique materials leverage the best and most cost‐effective science for the global community.Curators representing the participating institutions meet semi‐annually to coordinate repository activities, to set standards for archival, and to maintain policies that maximize research use of materials. These planning meetings began in 1977, when lack of coordination among institutions limited access to the broader community. The inaugural meeting of 18 interested repositories yielded a preliminary sediment description scheme and a first community data base, which opened in 1979 with records on 5000 sediment cores hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) and World Data Center for Marine Geology and Geophysics in Boulder, Colorado.