Congratulations to the awardees! Click each award title to see all past awardees.
Mary B. Ansari Distinguished Service Award
Recognizes and honors a member that has made significant contributions to the geoscience information process.
Rusty Kimball
The 2024 recipient of the Mary B. Ansari Distinguished Service Award from the Geoscience Information Society (GSIS) is Rusty Kimball. The Award recognizes significant contributions to the geoscience information community. It was presented, along with other GSIS awards on October 24, 2024, at the virtual GSIS business meeting.
Rusty worked as the Science and Engineering Librarian at Texas A&M for 18 years, retiring in July 2023, and is now serving as Librarian Emeritus and adjunct faculty. He began his career in librarianship in 2005 at Texas A&M University and dedicated his career to that institution. He authored 19 refereed publications in the geosciences and has been lately working in the area of open access.
Rusty served GSIS as Vice-president, President, and Past President (2008-2010), as well as chairing the Mary B. Ansari Best Reference Work Award Committee (now the Best Research Resource Award) for many years, the Best Paper Award Committee, the Archives Committee, and
the 2009 – 2010 Nominating Committee. In 2010 – 2011, he served as GSIS Topical Session Convener and editor of Volume 42 of the GSIS Proceedings. In addition, Rusty’s impact extended to the broader geoscience profession as he spearheaded digitization projects that provide open access to the Geologic Atlas of the United States (http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/2490) and the Proceedings of the Geoscience Information Society (http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/152267). Michael Noga commented that this contribution ensures the “preserving and spreading access to a core function and value of the Geoscience Information Society.”
As another of his colleagues commented in her letter of recommendation to the committee, those who were fortunate to work with Rusty have said that he was versatile, he was always willing to collaborate with others, he was kind, and he always shared his scientific and technical expertise with our geoscience community. The committee is proud to add Rusty to the list of GSIS Mary B. Ansari Distinguished Service Awardees.
Best Paper Award
The Best Paper Award has been presented annually since 1986, given to the best paper published in the field of geoscience information during the previous year.
Ma, X., Ralph, J., Zhang, J., Que, X., Prabhu, A., Morrison, S.M. et al. (2024) OpenMindat: Open and FAIR mineralogy data from the Mindat database. Geoscience Data Journal, 11, 94–104. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.204
The GSIS Best Paper Committee has chosen “OpenMindat: Open and FAIR mineralogy data from the Mindat database” by Xiaogang Ma et al. as this year’s winner. The article appeared in Volume 11, Issue 1 of the Geoscience Data Journal. The committee of Shaun Hardy (Carnegie Institution for Science), Jason Coleman (Kansas State University) and Christopher Thiry (Colorado School of Mines — Chair) examined over 20 candidate papers. While many excellent works were published over the last year, the Committee found “OpenMindat” to be the best, having significant “appeal to the broader geoscience information community.” The paper dealt with open science and open publishing. While their topic was narrow, the authors outlined the generalizability of their process thus making their work applicable to the wider geoscience information community. The authors put it into the context of a range of important data sources across the geosciences and their interconnectedness. They used the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) concepts achieved solid progress on two activities with Mindat, one of the largest mineral databases in the world: to cleanse data and improve data quality, and to build a data sharing platform and establish a machine interface for data query and access. The Committee commends the authors for their work.
Mary B. Ansari Best Research Resource Award
The Mary B. Ansari Best Research Resource Award recognizes an exemplary geosciences research resource publication or website.
As of 2016, the Best Website award has been rolled into this award, so if there’s a great website you’re aware of, feel free to nominate it.
US Geological Society (USGS) & Association of American State Geologists (AASG). (n.d.). National Geologic Map Database. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ngmdb/ngmdb_home.html
This year is the first time the award has been given to a website resource since the Best Website award was integrated into the Best Reference Resources category in 2016. The committee unanimously recognized that the National Geologic Map Database (NGMDB) highlights significant geoscience research and emphasizes critical information within the geosciences, noting that its consistent updates and most recent upgrade represents such an important advancement that we considered it something new. All members agreed it is a deserving recipient of this award.
David (Dave) Soller, Geologist & Project Chief of the National Geologic Map Database, has been a pivotal figure since the project’s inception and was delighted to accept the award on behalf of the USGS and the dedicated staff who have contributed to its success. “The NGMDB project has a long history of collaboration with Library colleagues, and one of the first public statements of the plan for the NGMDB is found in GSIS’s 1999 Proceedings (Soller, 2024).
Additional Background information: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info/reports/
Best Guidebook(s) Award
These awards recognize the value of guidebooks and reward examples of excellence in three categories:
- Outstanding Geologic Field Trip Guidebook Series for organizations that have made continued contributions to the geologic field trip over time.
- Best Guidebook (professional category) where professionals in the field are the audience.
- Best Guidebook (popular category) where the layman is the audience.
New Mexico Geological Society’s Fall Field Conference Guidebooks
Their website: https://nmgs.nmt.edu/publications/guidebooks/home.cfml
(Defunct)
Best Website Award
Presented to a website which exemplifies outstanding standards of content, design, organization, and overall site effectiveness.
As of 2016, the Best Website Award has been combined with the Best Reference Award.