DTM physicist W. J. Rooney setting up apparatus for measuring electrical currents in the Earth induced by magnetic field changes, College, Alaska, August 1932.

Carnegie librarian Shaun Hardy completed a two-year project working with the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) to digitize DTM’s extensive data archive from the 2^nd International Polar Year.  This online resource, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Database Modernization Program, will be utilized for both scientific and historical scholarship.

In 1932-1933, DTM scientists journeyed to Alaska and northern Canada to take part in the 2^nd International Polar Year (IPY2) – a coordinated campaign of geophysical and meteorological observations by scientists from 40 nations.  Now, thanks to a two-year collaboration between DTM and NSIDC, the original records from the Department’s IPY2 work have been digitized and are available online in NSIDC’s ROCS Archives Catalog.  Shaun Hardy and Ruth Duerr (NSIDC) coordinated the project, which involved scanning thousands of instrument recordings, log sheets, photographs, and technical documents.

The core of DTM’s IPY2 archive consists of geomagnetic, atmospheric-electric, Earth-current, meteorological, auroral, and ionospheric data obtained at the College-Fairbanks and Point Barrow stations.  Observatory plans, technical memoranda, and correspondence were also digitized, along with nearly 200 field photographs from DTM’s archives.  The images depict work at the Alaska stations and at the Canadian Polar Year station at Chesterfield Inlet, on the west coast of Hudson Bay.  

Hardy and Duerr also combed the DTM library for rare publications from the first International Polar Year (1882-1883).

Ultimately, two-dozen books and expedition reports were digitized as part of NSIDC’s DAHLI (Discovery and Access of Historic Literature from the IPYs) initiative.  The DTM digital collection is one of several hosted by ROCS (Roger G. Barry Resource Office for Cryospheric Studies), an NSIDC information program supporting the study of Earth’s frozen regions, the history of science, and past climate.  More information about DTM’s contributions to IPY2 is available in a finding aid prepared for the Department’s archives.