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any) stored in the “Background Materials”. Some collections of seismograms cre-
ated for certain specific projects are archived under “Archives by Special Projects”.
In 2007, W.H.K. Lee established seismograms archives for “Reference Stations
of the World” at http://www.iris.edu/seismo/stations/. These Reference Stations are
strategically located seismographic stations with relatively long duration of opera-
tion, and every effort is being made to scan the available seismograms and related
materials (with the cooperation of the host stations). So far, Reference Stations in-
clude: (1) San Juan, Puerto Rico, (2) Honolulu/Kipapa, Hawaii, (3) College, Alaska,
(4) Tucson, Arizona, (5) Albuquerque, New Mexico, (6) Weston Observatory, Mas-
sachusetts, and (7) Observatorio San Calixto, La Paz, Bolivia. We hope more seis-
mographic stations will agree to become Reference Stations and make efforts to
scan their seismograms and related materials.
In the section on “Background Information”, (http://www.iris.edu/seismo/info/),
digital image-files of papers, books, reports, photos, and maps are archived in order
to provide useful background information for the scanned seismograms. At present,
this section is being developed and is far from being complete. It has (1) Historical
Information: early developments in seismology, especially about instrumentation;
(2) Seismographic Stations: catalogs of historical and WWSSN stations that contain
detailed station information; and (3) Books and Reports: some valuable publica-
tions. Although most existing files are “borrowed” from the supplementary mate-
rials (on CD-ROMS) of the “International Handbook Earthquake and Engineering
Seismology” (Lee et al. 2002; 2003), we plan to include additional materials over
time, including the Handbook's “errata and addenda”. We also encourage all seis-
mologists to contribute their data files and related information that are relevant to
the scanned seismograms.
The effort to preserve WWSSN and historical seismograms and related materials
online is an immense task both in terms of human labor and computer resources, and
the authors' goal is to solicit contributions so that redundant search-and-discover
operations are eliminated and the collection can grow and remain viable for gener-
ations to come.
At the time of writing this article, 30 earthquake archives are available online
at various stages of construction, and about 100 more archives are in waiting. We
realize that the scanned seismograms are just the first step. We hope users of these
image files will convert them to digital data files, and make the digitized seismo-
grams available through the SeismoArchives. Certainly a long-term goal is to be
able to supply appropriate metadata, like gain information, etc., and information
relatedtothiswouldbeveryuseful.
6 Other Projects for Archiving Seismograms
So far, we have described the efforts in archiving analog seismograms online
taken by the authors and their USGS colleagues. Many other projects for archiving
analog seismograms online have been and are being conducted by several institu-
tions around the world. We will briefly describe three examples.
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