The lithology log collection consists of 70,000 paper logs; some of which are stored in the Boston Office (10 Park Plaza) of MHD. The collection has been recorded electronically in a database. The electronic records of logs were collected and catalogued in two time periods, from 1940 to 1998, and from 1998 to present. All logs prior to 1998 from various contractors are in an electronic database that is linked to scanned tiff images of each borehole. The work of scanning the lithology logs, was a project undertaken by Boston College (BC), and consisted of 60,000 borehole logs, from 10,000 locations. The data from the BC work is part of a database controlled by the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority and they share data with the Massachusetts Highway Department. Since 1998, all logs have been submitted as electronic autocad files, as DXF or DWG files. In addition, cores are digitally photographed and included with the borehole log. The collection of 70,000 logs includes the work of BC (60,000 logs) and 10,000 logs from 1998 to the present day.
This collection of lithology logs were obtained from various drilling projects of the Massachusetts Highway Department (MHD), involving the construction of bridges, highways, retaining walls and buildings, throughout the state.
Presently, there are firewall protection issues that do not permit easy access to data that is shared between the Massachusetts Highway Department and the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority. Pre-1998 lithology logs are recorded in a geodatabase. Fields contained in the database include depth of well, water table, etc., but not the lithology. An improvement would be to design a data structure that would produce a series of related tables containing geotechnical data, lithologic descriptions and physical parameters such as water table elevations and depth to bedrock. If data could be part of a GIS, information in the collection would be more useful and internet accessibility would increase usage.
