Geological Society plans developing-world initiative

The Geological Society of London will make all the current and archival content from its digitised publications – the Lyell Collection – freely available to higher education institutions, NGOs and geological surveys in developing countries. According to the society, this move will give researchers, teachers and students in some of the poorest countries around the world access to over 14,000 original research articles and 230,000 full-text pages from the society’s journals and special publications, from the mid 1800s through to the present day.

Access to the Lyell Collection will be facilitated by INASP (the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications). However, the Geological Society says that it believes that further support is required for this access to have a real and positive impact on the progress of developing countries. To that end, the society has formed a partnership with Schlumberger – which technology, project management and information solutions to the oil, gas and water extraction industries.

The partners will focus their support where the local infrastructure and expertise can utilise the information resources to best effect, according to the Geological Society. They are also working with AfricaArray – an initiative that brings together education, training and research programmes for building and maintaining a scientific workforce for Africa’s natural resource sector.