GUIDELINES FOR THE CURATION OF GEOLOGICAL MATERIALS

Regis, Charmouth; for Whitby, Saltwick, Black Nab and even Kettleness). In
general, whilst it is recognised that by today's standards the majority of locality
data is poor, it must also be recognised that by those of the last century and even
later, it was adequate. Old collections cannot be judged too harshly against
modern requirements.
The documentation of localities is a subject separately considered in Appendix
111.
(1) The catalogue entry. The MDA Geology Specimen Card Instruction (MDA
1980) give advice on the recording of place names and much of it is generally
applicable. The 'address' of a locality may be very long or very short but
whichever, all place names necessary or pertinent to a locality should be
recorded, preferably in the order specific to general. Detail (e.g. relative
positions, and other qualifiers) should of course be recorded according to the
system in use (MDA card or other). Pertinence of necessity is of course a matter
of judgement, relying in part on the index requirements (and also on the simple
necessity to locate a place geographically). Restricted areas of particular interest,
perhaps up to the size of a country, may be indexed by the most specific place
name; in such cases (and probably in many others) recording must be carried out
in conjunction with a map, ideally to a standard scale, and preferably a standard
edition. Thus, only those names occurring on the map would be permissible as
index headings. Furthermore, if one wishes to index by Parish or District for
example, clearly these must be listed systematically and exhaustively.
Similarly, an index may be required to distinguish between specimens from the
five countries of the British Isles. The care with which locality data are recorded
is of special value to any computer processing of information. The end result of
this may be an alphabetical listing of all place names at every hierarchical level, a
very powerful tool for research (see E1.3.2). Curators should consider carefully
their documentation techniques with future machine processing in mind.
(2) The National Grid Reference (NGR). The National Grid was established to
provide a reference system for the whole of the British Isles and every locality is
referable to it. A detailed explanation can be found in Harley (1975). A brief
summary is available in Cooper et al. 1980, p. 45, and on the back of many
Ordance Survey maps. A NGR defines an area, the size of which is determined by
the length of the reference. A 10-figure reference (with its additional 2-letter
prefix) defines 1square metre; a 6-figure reference defines 100 square metres and
a 4-figure defines 1square kilometre. In practice 6figure references are the most
commonly used, being easily obtained from 1 inch or 1:50000 scale maps and
sufficiently accurate for most purposes. Whenever the geographic origin of a
specimen is precisely known (in terms of the accuracy of the NGR system) it is
recommended that a 6-figure NGR is recorded.
In addition to their use as a finding device, NGRs have been used as index
headings (see for example Cooper et al. 1980, p. 29) though there are difficulties.
A particular problem concerns the documentation of older collections where
precise locality data are unavailable. A system of 4-figure references, used purely
as an index, has been used successfully in conjunction with the 1972 Ordnance
Survey Gazetteer of Great Britain which lists all place names occurring on the
"114 inch7' maps together with their 4-figure NGRs. Specimens with poor
documentation may unhelpfully be recorded as coming from Dudley, Bath,
Matlock or Torquay; a 6-figure reference for such place names is unacceptable
since it introduces false accuracy. However their 4-figure references, as given in