During its history, since 1872, the Minnesota Geological Survey (MGS) has published over 40,000 pages of reports, and more than 600 maps. These documents remain a crucial source of information that the people of Minnesota need to ensure wise stewardship of their water, land, and mineral resources. The documents also facilitate societal benefits related to economic prosperity, public health, natural hazards, aesthetic appreciation and preservation of our natural heritage. In the current era, people access much of the information that they need, or wish to view, through the Internet and the web. In 2007, therefore, at the instigation of the MGS Director, Dr. Harvey Thorleifson, the MGS launched a project to scan and web-enable every document formally published in the history of the organization. This has been completed, with the generous support of the Minnesota Digital Library, and the University of Minnesota Libraries Digital Collections Unit (DCU). In particular, the advice and support of Jason Roy of the DCU is acknowledged with appreciation. A major effort was required to assemble the materials to be scanned, this was thoroughly and diligently carried out by MGS Librarian Miriam Clayton, with some assistance from Dr. Thorleifson. Maps and report inserts were categorized, flattened and labeled, and a record kept of dimensions and color of each map. Metadata for the map imagery was provided by Rich Lively at the MGS. While all reports, including bound foldouts, were scanned by a contractor, maps and loose inserts from reports were scanned by the University of Minnesota Libraries Digital Collections Unit. The unfolded collection of maps, having been scanned, has now been archived at MGS. The link to Minnesota Reflections which is acting as the host site for the map images is now active. MGS maps can be found by Searching for Minnesota Geological Survey or by Browsing the collection, where listings are in alphabetical order of contributor. The map images web page is searchable by title, author, county and description; maps can be viewed at a variety of zoom levels.

The pages from the reports are still being processed within the DCU and will be linked as they become available.

The entire MGS team is pleased that this digitizing effort has finally come to fruition and we are thrilled to have our publications preserved and available for use online.