Where catalogue metadata for maps includes bounding box information (the map extents), the search engine now includes a overview image of the location of the map as part of the search results. This can help considerably in locating the map geographically and thereby helping to contextualise it.

WOSSAC hosted a meeting of the Tropical Agriculture Association at Cranfield on 7th December 2011. Cranfield staff talked on the use of legacy soils data for modern digital mapping projects; the situation for overseas soil survey materials in Britain before WOSSAC; and the origins, development, current operation and on-going projects of WOSSAC. They also gave a guided tour of the archive, and instructions on the use of the WOSSAC web portal. There was a presentation on behalf of HTSPE, the largest and longest established of the private sector consultancy companies in overseas soil soil surveys, and an account of the International Soil Reference and Information Centre by the its former director, Professor David Dent. Professor Jane Rickson of the National Soil Resources Centre at Cranfield gave the delegates a lunchtime guided tour of the on-campus experimental sites and facilities in soil erosion and conservation research.

Mrs Marion Anderson and Mrs Grace Stretton-Downes, the widow and daughter of the late Gordon Anderson, visited WOSSAC on 1st August 2011. Their purpose was to donate Gordon's soil books, documents, maps and slides. These cover a range of topics and areas, particularly his work done in Tanganyika (Tanzania) in 1940's 1960's, when Gordon did much pioneering soil mapping and pedology throughout the country, especially in the Nachingwea and Ngorogoro areas. The collection also included rare manuscripts from Gordon's contemporaries in Tanzania, such as Geoffrey Milne. WOSSAC is most grateful to Mrs Anderson for taking the trouble to preserve and hand on these items, and the archive and soil science in general are enriched by such irreplaceable materials. WOSSAC is happy to assure Mrs Anderson and other previous and potential donors that all materials are securely held and will be made available to those interested.

It's important for us to keep in touch with users of WOSSAC, such as yourself, and the requirements of the archive. We have therefore launched a new User Survey for WOSSAC to enable us to gain an overview of the ways the archive is used. Please take a moment to complete the survey.

As the former Soil Survey of England and Wales surveyors travelled around the countryside, taking a photographic record was an important part of capturing information about the soil resources they found. This left an invaluable and systematic photographic collection of 'natural England and Wales'. Today, the process of capturing this complete historical set of 35mm slides and photographs of the soil profiles and associated landscapes held by NSRI is well underway. The project, sponsored by the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS), and described in full here, has so far captured some 5,500 slides of the UK and further abroad, comprising some 21Gb of digital data. The slides will be made available on WOSSACs sister website SoilsWorldwide (http://www.soilsworldwide.net).

Because of the long-standing and close relationship between Cranfield's National Soil Resources Institute (NSRI) and its predecessor organisations, the WOSSAC collection today contains extensive materials relating to the British Society of Soil Science. Comprising meeting notes, excursion references and many other documents besides, these materials together represent a unique insight into the development of soil science in Britain and around the world over the past several decades. The WOSSAC team are pleased to be able to publish these materials now in scanned digital form for the first time for access by interested parties and scholars. To access materials in this collection, enter a search string of 'BSSS' in the search box.

The scanning and digital capture of the material, comprising 224 documents, comprise in total some 13 Gb of data, highlighting the magnitude of the task undertaken.

Following the completion of a project sponsored by the UNEP, WOSSAC is pleased to have placed online digital materials comprising a systematic scanning of all holdings for Sudan. This extraordinary set of information is of tremendous importance as a support for governance in Sudan, and as a research resource. Materials provided set out the context of land evaluation in Sudan, since the first soil investigations in the 1930s. The material held for Sudan is comprehensive, beginning with early colonial mapping and including a number of national soil assessments undertaken in the 1950s. There are also comprehensive records from soil and land use investigations carried out by the Land Resources Division of the UK in the area of Tabora and a collection of further surveys at various scales. Finally the archive holds a comprehensive collection of reports and maps of surveys undertaken in the Nile Valley irrigated area, dating from the 1960s.

The scanning and digital capture of the material, comprising 1,578 maps and 687 reports, comprise in total some 100 Gb of data, highlighting the magnitude of the task undertaken.

Related to a great many of the soil survey maps and reports held in Wossac, Professor Antony Young gave a fascinating lecture entitled 'Thin on the Ground : Land Resources Survey in Malawi and the Commonwealth', based on his book of the same name, at the 2010 Nyika-Vwaza (UK) Trust annual lecture and social evening at the Royal Geographical Society, London, on 9th November, 2010. The Nyika-Vwaza Trusts are the only Malawian and UK trusts dedicated solely to conserving the precious wildlife and habitats of Northern Malawi, in particular the Nyika National Park and the Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. On this ocassion they invited Professor Young to speak about the history of British Colonial soil survey and how the agricultural potential of Malawi has been assessed as a contribution both to Colonial history and to the history of soil science. Anthony's website is http://www.land-resources.com

In a further significant development for the WOSSAC archive, we are about to commence another project on behalf of the European Union to capture systematically the full extent of all the data holdings for Tanzania, in conjunction with colleagues in the Institute of Resource Assessment (IRA) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Wossac contains a huge wealth of maps field reports and soil profile descriptions for this region and this project will provide the IRA team crucial materials in support of the ongoing development of their on-line Environmental Information Centre 'TANRIS'. The work will be conducted drawing on the technical capabilities at Cranfield to capture the reports and books held in the archive.

In a very significant development for the WOSSAC archive, we have now commenced a key project on behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme to capture systematically the full extent of all the data holdings for Sudan. Wossac contains a huge wealth of maps field reports and soil profile descriptions for this region and this project will provide the UNEP's 'Sudan Integrated Environment Project' crucial materials in support of the ongoing development of an online Environmental Information Centre, itself designed to support online access to research on the environment. The work will be conducted drawing on the technical capabilities at Cranfield, boosted by the provision of a Bookeye book scanning system, capable of reproducing high quality representations of the many reports and books held in the archive. The scanner will continue the good work in Sudan as soon the task at Cranfield is completed. The project itself is sponsored by the UK Government Department DfID with funds being provided via UNEP to the project. The project is being managed in Sudan by R. Neil Munro, a soil scientist and land systems expert with long experience in this region, who has also kindly provided many materials from his personal collection to the Wossac project.

In a fitting tribute to Professor Peter Bullock (1937-2008), a former Director of the Soil Survey of England and Wales and its successor in Cranfield University, SSLRC, Cranfield have named one of the key buildings on the Cranfield campus holding WOSSAC materials as 'The Bullock Building'. The building was kindly launched by Professor David Kell of BBSRC in a ceremony that brought together a wide range of friends and colleagues - many who have also had associations with WOSSAC. The Bullock Building at Cranfield is the home of the Natural Resources Department in Cranfield within which is the National Soil Resources Institute (NSRI). The building also forms the 'hub' of Cranfield's soil activities, being also the home of the Integrated Environmental Systems Institute (IESSI), The British Society of Soil Science (BSSS), The Institute of Agri-Engineers (IAGRE) and the River Restoration Centre (RRC). Other photographs of this event are available here

Recovering data from old digital media is a hard job! Not so long ago most PCs had 5.25 inch floppy drives (storing a huge 1.2Mb data!!). The WOSSAC archive contains a number of 5.25 diskettes and we have recently been trying to establish how to read off these datasets onto more contemporary media. Fortunately luck was at hand and we have been able to obtain an old disk drive. Finding a cable that went with it was a harder job. However, after spreading a PC in bits across the floor and plugging the various cables in eventually we can read 5.25 diskettes again - there's progress! Fortunately the modern operating systems still know about these drives. Now begins the laborious task of transferring the datasets themselves.

A new Territory Mapping tool is released that allows users to map catalogued items dynamically from the WOSSAC database. The results are presented in a Google Maps container allowing users to see immediately the extent and density of mapping records. Records are only shown for individual territories to allow the mapping tool to respond quickly - a drop down box allows easy selection of other terrotories. A further benefit is that passing the mouse over an item shows an outline momentarily on the map of the extent of the item.

The National Soil Archive and Publication store have now been moved from their old location at the Silsoe campus to a new home on Cranfield Campus.

The publications store of books and maps is now located within easy access of the publications officer allowing a more efficient turn around on book sales. In the moving process the materials have also been organised and catalogued more efficiently.

The National Soil Archive holds not only a large collection of physical soil samples but also soil data, maps and information collected over many years. Materials include:

• Over 150,000 Auger bore records;
• Over 10,000 full soil profile descriptions (only a fraction of which have been captured electronically);
• 1:10,000 scale field sheets covering almost the whole of England and Wales;
• a large collection of published papers relating to soil;
• a large collection of aerial photographs;
• a substantial collection of satellite imagery (currently being transferred from the original Magnetic tape storage media);
• an old, valuable collection of soil micro-morphology slides;
• the historical documents of the original Soil Survey of England and Wales;
• The WOSSAC map and document collection;

If any of these sound interesting to you and you would like to inquire about access to the material please contact us.

The WOSSAC archive is on the move! Pickfords, the removals firm selected by the University, have now started to load up the soil archive materials at the Silsoe location ready for their imminent relocation to a new home at the Cranfield campus close to NSRI staff. It is hoped this process will be completed by about Christmas time as the new facilities are put in place for their receipt. This move will help enormously to ease the access to the archive by staff and students - something that has proved difficult over the past few years since the former Silsoe campus staff were relocated to Cranfield. The collection is now in very good shape having undergone a substantial reorganisation over the last year and can play an active role in current and ongoing soil-related global issues.

The WOSSAC archive took delivery of a number of soil survey-related rticles, book sand maps from Wye Agricultural College, which sadly is being closed down in a move reminiscent of the events at Silsoe College. However, the library staff kindly provided the soils materials to the WOSSAC Archive in recognition of the ammassed collections now held at Cranfield.

The WOSSAC archive took delivery of a substantial load of materials, kindly donated by Neil Munro - an active soil scientist working in Sudan. The materials are being sorted through and made ready for cataloguing.

The WOSSAC archive holds a broad range of materials, from reports, to maps, to books to digital datasets and so on. To give some idea of the diversity of these materials, numbering now in the tens of thousands, a selection of interesting example samplers are provided online.

An intensive project of over six months in the WOSSAC archive is finally coming to an end. This has involved a concerted effort made by a large contingent of part-time staff to catalogue and order all of the outstanding materials and artefacts in the various collections in the archive. Many thousands of new reports, publications, maps, surveys and books have been entered into catalogue format and have been tagged and reshelved. These entries are now being successively uploaded to the online searchable index. This work was undertaken in preparation for the imminent move of the WOSSAC archive from Cranfield's Silsoe campus to the Cranfield site.

The WOSSAC archive presents a new look for the collection website. A more contemporary, standards-compliant format improves the experience users will have and hopefully make it now easier to locate items of interest from the archive.

The Wossac archive received a second visit from Professor Tony Young following the publication of his recent book 'Thin on the Ground'. Tony kindly provided a range of materials collated during the writing of the book. These materials comprised many African works not currently in the archive, as well as soil surveys of the Pitcairn Islands. These materials will now be entered into the archive.

WOSSAC pays tribute to Professor Peter Bullock, a leading soil scientist of international repute. Peter was one of the core founders of the WOSSAC collection and archive, and his extraordinary vision and commitment to soil science led, amongst many achievements, to the implementation of WOSSAC in its current form.
Peter Bullock 1937-2008.

Those familiar with Cranfield will know that sadly the Silsoe Campus is finally to be closed with all activities there moved to the nearby main campus at Cranfield: joining with the many other environmental groups there to form the new School of Applied Science (SAS). Although at the time of writing all environmentally-focussed staff and most related facilities are now moved, the WOSSAC archive and the associated national soils collection remain still at Silsoe. In March, 2008 a huge task has been commenced to sort, organise, catalogue and prepare the materials in the archive to move to their new home at Cranfield. It is anticipated that this process will take many months and involve the labours of many staff - this is no light undertaking! However, the end result will be that these precious materials will be relocated close to the offices of the staff - ending the current rather problematic geographical separation.

One exciting development in this process is the conversion of the enormous collection of satellite tape data held at Cranfield to contemporary storage media. We hold over 10,000 open reel satellite tapes holding data stretching back to the early days of planetary imaging. It is amazing to think that the data from all of these tapes, now taking up several rooms, will all fit on one modern hard disk! These datasets are being processed and copied onto the Cranfield fileservers in modern image processing format such that they can be made available, respecting Copyright, to researchers and other interested parties along with other Wossac materials. Here is a taster of the data we hold, click each image to see more.

The Wossac collection gratefully received a donation of a number of spare mapping items from the Bodleian Library in Oxford. These materials comprised many geological and related maps for Cyprus and Greece. These will be catalogued and entered into the reference collection.

November, 2007 saw the launch of the WOSSAC archives new sister website 'SoilsWorldwide' at http://www.soilsworldwide.net. This presents for the first time online, access to the extensive Soil Photographic Image Catalogue (SoilPIC), a unique collection of photographic imagery from around the world showing the true extent and variety of soil conditions, profiles and associated landscapes. SoilsWorldwide was part funded by the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS).

Much of the catalogue of the Wossac archive consists of entries that have geographical extents associated with them, be they maps, aerial imagery or reports. Here is a link to our 'work in progress' to try and map that using Google Maps.

It's actually not easy to know how to present this information and not to clutter up the map - simply due to the large volume of materials we hold. The Google API offers some promising tools to help achieve this, for instance with display of objects linked to zoom levels etc.

WOSSAC received a copy of Professor Anthony Young's excellent and informative new book entitled "Thin on the Ground - Land Resource Surveys in British Overseas Territories". This book chronicles the work in British overseas territories undertaken by land resource planners, ecologists and soil surveyors as they mapped the natural resources of many countries for agriculture and rural development. Of course a great many of the documents described in this book are the very ones now held in WOSSAC. This is a fascinating read and provides an insightful exposition of how and why many of the holdings in WOSSAC were created.

Here is a link to purchase this excellent book from Amazon.
Another route to obtain the book is via http://www.thememoirclub.co.uk. Select Bookshop, scan past all the "The" titles, select Thin... and click to purchase.

Much of the catalogue of the Wossac archive has geographical extents associated with it. These can be converted into placeholders that can be viewed using Google Earth. The files are in Google Earth KML and KMZ format. So far prototype files are made available (zipped up for download) for:

• Africa (zip) | (kmz)
• America (zip) | (kmz)
• Asia (zip) | (kmz)
• Europe (zip) | (kmz)
• Oceania (zip) | (kmz)

Many of the materials in the WOSSAC archive are being captured in electronic format and certain of these materials are now made available on a provisional basis from the WOSSAC website. To see the materials available to date, select a full text search and select only the checkbox concerning downloads. An icon in the first column of the results table denotes the presence of a downloadable copy of the item, be it a PDF or a scanned bitmap file. Note that some of these files can be large in size!

WOSSAC was the recipient of a substantial collection of maps from HTSPE. Some further 2,500 maps arrived on pallets which were unloaded into the archive. These comprise largely African soil maps and topographical studies. The materials are being shelved at present and should hopefully soon appear on the online catalogue.

The fascinating story of LRD/LRDC has been captured in this most illuminating book, written by John Makin, John Bennet, Martin Brunt and Chris Griffin. The book tells the story of the Land Resources Division (LRD) of the British Ministry of Overseas Development in their work across some 60 developing countries between 1956 to 2001. The book tells the story behind the organisation itself, and also many of the surveys and investigations which now occupy the archive shelves of WOSSAC.

Here is a link to purchase this excellent book from Amazon.

The WOSSAC collection search engine has received an overhaul and now presents item information to users in a more intuitive manner, including the ability to identify the 'shelfmark' for items in the collection. This facilitates pre-preparation undertaken before a session in the archive. Items sought can be easily located once on the floor of the archive.

The WOSSAC collection received a significant collection of materials from Mr Reen Ysselmuiden, an experienced and accomplished land and soil surveyor. Reen presented a substantial collection of soil and land survey reports stretching back over his career in Indonesia.

The WOSSAC archive hosts a number of major collections, the most significant of which is that of HTSPE Ltd. A series of web pages have been created to present the subset of materials from HTSPE within the wider WOSSAC collection following the design of the HTSPE website allowing the materials to be fully integrated into the HTSPE web experience.

The WOSSAC team receive a visit from Dr David Dent, Director of ISRIC, the World Data Center for Soils who are responsible for collecting, archiving, and distributing data and research information.

One of the key topics of this meeting was to develop the means to coordinate the development of soil-related collections such as those of ISRIC and WOSSAC to contribute to a 'live soils data resource and archive' in the future.

The WOSSAC team received a kind donation from Professor Donatello Magaldi, Prof.Ordinario di Geologia Applicata DISAT-Università di L'Aquila of several key soils documents for Lombardy, Ireland, Kenya and PNG.

A comprehensive set of satellite and other imagery files and prints were aquired from the University of Grenwich Library at Chatham, representing part of the former NRI collection. These images are predominantly of African scenes and will now be entered within the WOSSAC catalogue system.

NRI, or the Natural Resources Institute was a key organisation for conducting soil and landscape research around the world and it is hoped this aquisition will form an important component of the contemporary WOSSAC archive.

Google Earth is fast becoming a mapping phenomena! One attractive feature of GE is its ability to host user-defined files. Accordingly, a project has commenced to see how easily the vast contents of the WOSSAC archive could be made available within GE. User files are held as 'KML' or 'KMZ' spatial metadata files. If you have Google Earth, you can download the example KML file here to see how this could look.

The WOSSAC collection has received a vast number of topographical maps from around the world, forming part of the former HTSPE Topographic map collection. Arriving together with with three large map chests, these maps were collected over a period of many decades, representing together a unique collection of mapping from around the world. The process of cataloguing these maps will take a considerable time.

A formal launch event for the WOSSAC collection and archive is being held on 18/10/2005 at the 2005 Plenary Meeting of the European Soil Bureau Network. This will mark the end of the first phase of WOSSAC, namely the securing and preservation of the extraordinary materials it contains, and the beginning if the second phase of the project, whereby these materials are to be made easily accessible and available for consultation by interested parties. Work is still underway to gain grant support to secure a sound financial footing for the archive in future years, but the progress to the current time has been very promising and productive. Further information on the wider European-level project can be located online at the European Soil Portal.

The WOSSAC project launches a newly overhauled website offering significantly enhanced options for searching through the contents of the catalogue, as well as for reporting the occasional error (!) in the data entries. The website has been warmly received by the key stakeholders associated with WOSSAC.

HTSPE Ltd. present their archive materials to the WOSSAC collection at Cranfield. The WOSSAC project will host the HTSPE Collection of soil-related reports and maps and other media for safe-keeping.The HTSPE Collection is an enormously significant archive representing over 50 years of work by HTSPE and the precedent Huntings Technical Services Ltd. conducted internationally, pertaining to themes such as soil survey, geology, natural resource management, land evaluation and suitability, topography, remote sensing and GIS. The Collection has three components. Firstly, it comprises paper-based books, reports and related survey documents, many of which contain associated maps, charts, figures and illustrations. It is estimated there are some 3,500 items in this category. Secondly there are a substantial number of 'stand-alone' maps produced either directly by the projects, or acquired as part of those activities. It is estimated there are some 3,000 items in this category. Thirdly there are a large number of digital data storage media holding computer-compatible datasets associated with these projects. There are many thousand items in this latter category. The HTSPE Collection comprises all these documents, maps and media. After an initial period of cataloging, we shall be establishing the best means for interested parties to access these materials.

The WOSSAC team received a donation of a series of soil-related publications, from Dr Brian Eavis, formerly of LRDC. These will be catalogued into the system and made available.

The WOSSAC team received a donation of a series of soil-related publications, noteably concerning vertisols from BBSRCs Silsoe Research Institute (SRI) library. These will be catalogued into the system and made available.

The WOSSAC team were grateful to receive a donation of a series of African soil survey materials from David Riley which will help boost the archive holdings.

The WOSSAC team were pleased to receive a visit from the eminent soil scientist Professor Anthony Young, who was keen to learn about the work of the project. Professor Young's website at http://www.land-resources.com outlines his long-standing experience in all aspects of land resources, including survey, evaluation, planning, conservation and management.

The WOSSAC team have recently commenced the process of contacting a wide range of persons and organisations who may have an interest in the project and its aims. If you hold such materials and would wish to assist the project, we would invite you to get in touch with the WOSSAC team directly.