Collection Needs

The IGWS Core Research and Teaching Repository (core library) holds approximately 51 miles of rock core; 18,360 boxes of rock cuttings; 17,000 lithologic strips; 4,000 boxes of unconsolidated sand, gravel, and clay samples; 5,161 outcrop and quarry hand samples; and more than 10,000 coal hand samples, plus a backlog of thousands of uncatalogued samples/specimens.

The collection is meant to be accessible to everyone who wants to use it. The IGWS does not charge fees to anyone wishing to access its physical or digital data.

Researchers from the Indiana Geological and Water Survey use the core library to predict where water supplies exist underground, where critical minerals and rare earth elements can be found, where oil, gas, and coal occur and their quality, and where carbon could be sequestered deep in the earth—all of which are critical questions to be answered in our state.

Researchers from private industries, such as Indiana limestone quarries and oil-and-gas companies, also use the core library to locate resources that contribute to the economic health of Indiana. Other scientists from local, state, and federal governments, universities from around the world, national laboratories, and even art and history museums access the collection. A 2017 economic impact analysis estimated that the IGWS provides at least $110 million in economic benefit to the state and its residents annually, excluding the monetary value of IGWS's physical collections.

In addition, “Not only does the IGWS provide technical information for discovering, developing, and preserving the mineral, energy, and groundwater resources of Indiana,” the report said, “but it reduces environmental risks to the health, safety, and welfare of Indiana residents.”

Part of the core library’s unique value is that it's an unparalleled Indiana repository of physical geological data over time. Multiple energy research consultants have been studying cores from the library for possible carbon capture and storage projects in the Midwest; those cores were originally collected in the 1960s, when CO2 storage in geologic formations wasn’t on the horizon. In essence, the core library contains answers to questions that haven’t yet been asked.

“We do not have a crystal ball on the future, so we cannot envision the questions that the Survey’s physical collections will address years from now. One thing we know is that earth materials storage is much cheaper than initially collecting them and many times cheaper than collecting them again if that is even possible,” IGWS Director and State Geologist Todd Thompson said. 

The collection, spanning 1,054 pallets, is spread over five unconditioned or partially conditioned buildings at an off-campus site, which the state transferred to Indiana University in 2023. These buildings were constructed for industrial or highway maintenance equipment storage and are neither large enough nor configured to allow samples to be efficiently located, moved, and set out for inspection. 

To get to a requested core, a forklift operator must move pallets sitting in the aisles to a temporary location; find where the core is located (sometimes across multiple pallets); remove the pallets; find and inventory the boxes on the pallet(s); load them into a vehicle; transport the boxes to a place where the core can be unloaded, inspected, and/or tested; and then move everything back. Each request takes an average of five-and-a-half hours to complete and requires two collections staff members for safety reasons. Also, many unwaxed cardboard boxes are old and fragile, and every extra move increases the risk of damage and loss of material.

The buildings currently lack adequate space and lighting conditions for researchers to lay out and study the core, often necessitating off-site transport. In addition, the site frequently has maintenance problems which limit collections staff working there; and several buildings are inhabited by rodents, birds, and their droppings.

Additional moving-related challenges have competed for staff members’ attention in recent months; see below for more information. 

Yes, by appointment, if you must inspect it in person. However, it is strongly preferred that you search for digital records relating to that sample before requesting a physical sample pull. Due to limitations with staffing and at the storage site, researchers are asked to notify collections staff by email at igsacm@iu.edu three weeks ahead of their preferred visit date.

Part of the collection—cuttings—cannot be inspected in person because the move did not allow time for cataloging pallet locations. These samples are tightly packed into one building. However, lithologic strips can be viewed if strips were created from the core cuttings and the interval you are seeking.

NOTE: No new lithologic strips have been created since 2004. Two full-time and several part-time employees and students did that work; those jobs no longer exist.

Collections and information services staff are continually adding photographs of core and other associated records, such as core descriptions and geophysical logs, to IGWS Digital Collections. There are two ways to check whether the records we have posted so far will meet your research needs:

• Check IGWS Digital Collections for core photos, lithologic strip photos, and/or digital records
• Check the Geological Database Management System (GDMS) for lithologic strips under the Samples tab

In 2018, a comprehensive study was conducted on the Survey’s portion of the IU Geological Sciences Building and IGWS outbuildings on campus. It recommended that “a single building to accommodate all the geologic collections would be ideal, but short of that, easily accessible, secure, environmentally-controlled space is necessary for all collections” as well as “room to grow,” “space for specimen processing (such as core splitting, sample washing and sieving, sample preparation for analysis, etc.)” and “space for specimen examination and education” so that the IGWS can “accommodate current collections and permit their growth for the next 50 years.” A shorter report from 2018 recommending a new IGWS building (the "Indiana Dynamic Earth Archive [IDEA]") can be read at this link.

• Build a new building: A 20,000-square-foot building would have adequate conditioned space for current and future core; a shipping and receiving area; a slabbing, grinding, and polishing room; several viewing rooms with controlled lighting; a petrographic microscope room; cold storage; offices; and a classroom for teaching rock and sediment identification, sampling, and proper handling.
  Cost estimate: $10-12 million
  Status: No timeline
  
  
• Renovate existing structures: A building at the current off-campus site could be renovated and possibly expanded to provide suitable space and climate control. At a minimum, offices; sample layout areas; and rock and sample storage, preparation and investigation areas, with cold storage, are needed.
  Cost estimate: $1.5-2.5 million to renovate a 9,800-square-foot building. This is not large enough for our needs, but it would be an improvement on the current situation.
  Status: The IGWS passed information to IU Research and the state legislature in 2023 to request funding for this work. No money was allocated.
  
  
• Rebox material: The entire 400-ton core library was moved twice within five years, which put extra stress on already-deteriorating cardboard core boxes. In addition, older cores were stored in boxes that were not appropriately sized for their lengths and diameters, which wastes valuable shelf space. As cores are reboxed, that creates opportunities to photograph each box using white light and UV light, and to collect elemental analyses of the cores at 2-ft intervals. These data, then would be accessible through IGWS Digital Collections.
  Cost estimate: $882,000 (for compact shelving, core boxes, miscellaneous supplies, and staff)
  Status: In March 2025, the IGWS was awarded a $617,063 grant from the National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program (NGGDPP) to rebox the core collection—using hardy plastic, nestable, chemically stable boxes—and to purchase photography equipment for the digital preservation part of this work. Funding for additional staff was not approved. IU Research added $150,000 toward core boxes. Reboxing is projected to continue through June 2028. The IGWS is applying for additional funding from NGGDPP in 2026 to continue this work and take other steps to enhance digital data discoverability.

Prior to 2018, the Survey’s geologic collections were housed in four buildings on campus: the Core Library at 12th St. and Woodlawn Ave., the Ideal Laundry building at 12th St. and N. Park Ave., the IGWS Geologic Materials Testing (GMT) facility at 11th St. and N. Forrest Ave., and the basement of the Geological Sciences Building at 10th St. and N. Walnut Grove St.

The Core Library was transferred to the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture & Design Wood and Metal Shops in the fall of 2018 and the Ideal Laundry building was demolished for safety reasons in the summer of 2019. Part of GMT was demolished in the fall of 2019.

From November 2018 to November 2022, when Indiana University’s lease expired, the core collection was housed at the Cardinal Metal Finishing warehouse (formerly known as the Otis Elevator Factory) in Bloomington.

In late 2022, the core collection was moved to a group of five buildings off Wayport Road north of Bloomington. Space is shared with University Collections as a whole, with the IGWS occupying 16,569 square feet as of 2026. 

Meanwhile, the core library’s holdings continue to grow as researchers collect new samples to complete work associated with the U.S. Geological Survey’s STATEMAP and other grant-funded projects, and as industry partners donate to the collection. In 2021 alone, more than 5,000 linear feet of material was added to the library.

The geological sample collection fulfills an essential part of the IGWS’s statutory mission to “collect and preserve geologic specimens and data.” 

“Everything we need to know about Indiana’s geology, from its mineral and energy wealth to available water, is below our feet. The core library archives what we have of that material,” Thompson said. 

Rock and sediment cores in the collection have come from publicly funded geologic mapping and resource projects and from quarry operators; coal, oil, and gas operators; and exploration companies that opted to donate samples of certain types of Indiana rock. After analysis has been completed on a project for which the core was collected, those core samples are added to the library so that they can be reused and reexamined for later projects.  

The cost of collecting core increases incrementally with depth. Shallow cores down to 200 ft cost about $10,000 per core; cores collected from several thousand feet below the ground cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Providing a public library of cores and other samples, many of which were collected with taxpayer-funded grant programs like U.S. Geological Survey STATEMAP and Department of Energy CarbonSAFE projects, makes economic sense and levels the playing field for access to foundational scientific data for researchers, entrepreneurs, and established industry.

Notably, some samples in the core library, such as from quarried and mined lands, cannot be collected again. Care must be taken to preserve those irreplaceable samples.

“Money was spent to collect the cores and samples,” Thompson said. “Money was spent to examine and process the rock and sediment. And the earth materials were assessed by geologists and deemed worthy of keeping. In a sense, core and samples in our collections have been vetted as to their scientific value three times before they are housed.” 

In late April 2025, IU leadership informed the IGWS that the entire Survey had to move out of the Geology Building on the IU Bloomington campus, where it had been housed since 1962, so that an unrelated IU program could operate in that wing. Staff had until December to relocate five floors worth of offices and equipment—including more than 171,000 paper collection materials in the first-floor Records Center and 2,000-plus specimens in the first-floor Learning Lab. 

The new IGWS headquarters was placed at 5001 N. Indiana 37 Business, an IU-owned building 4 miles north of campus. This building contains no lab facilities, nor is it able to have laboratories added to it. As of February 2026:

• Most IGWS staff members whose work is not lab-dependent have moved to the new headquarters. Those who remain have until summer 2026 (estimated) to relocate either to the new headquarters or to another location in the Geological Sciences Building. 
• Three IGWS research labs in the Geological Sciences Building have temporarily been condensed into two. Other lab moves will happen over the next few years to completely vacate the IGWS wing.  
• Two full-time collections staff members are continuing to move paper records (maps, well logs, field notebooks, photographs, etc.) and Education Collection samples to the new headquarters. In order to quickly clear out the first-floor Records Center, collections that had been neatly organized were loaded into boxes and either taken to the IGWS basement or to the new building. Those records will need to be reorganized in their new home so that they are findable. The IGWS basement, too, will need to be emptied by an undetermined date. 
• These required moves are colliding with the grant-funded core reboxing timetable, leaving little time for collections staff to make progress on that project.  
• On Jan. 29, 2026, the IGWS basement flooded due to a frozen burst sprinkler pipe, further consuming staff time and destroying about $700 worth of archival boxes.

"We are actively providing care for these collections through having staff dedicated to the task, through creating new pathways of access via digitization, through reconnecting legacy materials throughout the collections, and through upgrading housing for the materials where we can,” said Jenna Lanman, archivist and collections manager.

• Staffing: A full-time collections assistant joined Lanman in 2021, doubling the size of that department.
   
• Digitization/reconnecting: The IGWS used ~$912,000 from 15 USGS National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program grant awards between 2007 and 2023 to make our collections more digitally discoverable and accessible. Recent digitization work related to the core library includes creating a searchable system to connect physical samples and the various types of paper records that correspond to them; describing, organizing, and ingesting more than 26,000 core photos and interpreted X-ray fluorescence data PDFs into IGWS Digital Collections; and rebuilding and modernizing the Petroleum Database Management System (now renamed the Geological Database Management System/GDMS) to make subsurface data more discoverable. In 2025, there were 42,990 downloads from IGWS Digital Collections with 21,472,811 page views and 135,301 users on the GDMS.
  
  
• Upgrading/rehousing: In addition to the grant-funded core reboxing project underway, staff have been working through the process of rehousing nearly 100 years’ worth of petroleum industry records, gamma-log records, maps, photographs, and field notebooks into archival boxes and cabinets, and were moving these into a Records Center on the first floor of the Geological Sciences Building for greater public access. The Survey’s move out of that building halted progress.

• Increasing the state appropriation, which provides most of our operating budget. The IGWS experienced a 15% budget cut between 2011 and 2012, and the budget has essentially remained steady except for cuts during the COVID pandemic and this past year. Currently, the IGWS appropriation is less than it was in 1993. Any request for an increase must first be included in IU’s overall budget request and then be approved by the Indiana General Assembly. A 2025 attempt—requesting $3.1 million on top of the current $2.7 million—failed at the state level.
  
  
• Disruptions to our physical spaces, which also increase pressure on our staffing, ongoing research projects, and budget.
   
• Disruptions to staffing. Since the spring 2025 move announcement, seven IGWS staff members—18 percent of the paid workforce—have resigned, several part-time workers were laid off, and budget constraints will not enable all of them to be replaced.  

That’s a good question and we don’t know how to answer it. However, we can share facts about our primary source of funding and our governance. 

• Current funding: Our current funding is always shown in House Enrolled Act 1001. Search for the term “geological."
• Responsibility for funding: Our state appropriation is outlined in Indiana Code 21-47-2-6 
• Duties and powers of the IGWS: Our duties and powers are explained in Indiana Code 21-47-2-3
• Advisory council: Requirements for our advisory council are outlined in Indiana Code 21-47-2-4
• Contact with state officials: The Survey is subject to IU Policy GR-01 regarding contact with government officials. We cannot recommend specific actions to state officials, federal officials, and political campaigns. 

• Core library move/closure announcement (2022)
• Economic impact of the IGWS (2017) 
• IGWS: Geology in the public interest (2025)
• The economic impacts of geoscience (American Geosciences Institute)
• Geoscience Data and Collections: National resources in peril (National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine)