Efforts are underway to digitally preserve seismograms, magnetograms and geomagnetic absolute observations from Australian observatories. These datasets are stored in original paper and film form and although they are available on request they are not easily discoverable or available at short notice to the public. The retrieval of analogue media is both time-consuming and labour-intensive and can cause further damage to deteriorating records. In this poster, we detail preserved examples of the handwritten records, microfilm, as well as original paper records dating back to 1959 for magnetograms from Wilkes Geomagnetic Observatory, and to 1902 for seismograms from Melbourne Observatory. Different generations of collected data have challenges associated with the preservation efforts, including; legibility, data compression algorithms, stability of the original medium and associated metadata. Additionally, costs and expertise required to create digital copies varies greatly between the different original mediums of data recordings. Our ongoing efforts have prioritised the preservation of the original analogue data through creation of digital copies before the record suffers from further deterioration, and, making those digital records publicly accessible through Geoscience Australia’s data servers to improve discoverability. Long term efforts following this will then be focused on digitisation for use with modern data analysis techniques.
Presented at the 2022 Australian Earthquake Engineering Society (AEES) Conference.