Database of Geoscientific References Th

2007 for Afghanistan, Version 2

Open-File Report 2007−1297

U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey
Database of Geoscientific References 

Through 2007 for Afghanistan, Version 2 

By Robert G. Eppinger,1 Julianna Sipeki,1 and M.L. Sco Scofield2

1

 U.S. Geological Survey, PO Box 25046, MS 973, Denver, CO 80225 

2

 Scofield Business Services, PO Box 101773, Denver, CO 80250-1773 

Open-File Report 2007–1297 

USGS Afghanistan Project Product Number 162 

U.S. Department of the Interior 

U.S. Geological Survey 
U.S. Department of the Interior 

DIRK A. KEMPTHORNE, Secretary 

U.S. Geological Survey 

Mark D. Myers, Director 

U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia: 2007 

For product and ordering information: 

World Wide Web: http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod 

Telephone: 1-888-ASK-USGS 

For more information on the USGS—the Federal source for science about the Earth, 

its natural and living resources, natural hazards, and the environment: 

World Wide Web: http://www.usgs.gov 

Telephone: 1-888-ASK-USGS 

Suggested citation: 

Eppinger, Robert G., Sipeki, Julianna, and Scofield, M.L. Sco , 2007, Database of 

geoscientific references through 2007 for Afghanistan, version 2: U.S. Geological Survey 

Open-File Report 2007-1297. 

Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not 

imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. 

Although this report is in the public domain, permission must be secured from the 

individual copyright owners to reproduce any copyrighted material contained within this 

report. 

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Contents 

Introduction.............................................................................................. 4 

Keyword-Searchable Database.................................................................... 5 

Database Output....................................................................................... 9

Database Structure................................................................................... 10

References Cited...................................................................................... 10

Table 

1. Database field names and descriptions for reference tables........................... 11 

Figures 

1. The reference database opening splash screen ............................................. 6 

2. The reference database main switchboard screen....................................... 6 

3. The “Database Information” screen.......................................................... 7 

4. The search criteria dialog screen............................................................. 8 

5. Example search results screen................................................................ 9 

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Database of Geoscientific References

Through 2007 for Afghanistan, Version 2 

By Robert G. Eppinger, Julianna Sipeki, and M.L. Sco Scofield 

Introduction 

This report describes an accompanying database of geoscientific references for the country 

of Afghanistan. The reference compilation is part of a larger joint study of Afghanistan’s energy, 

mineral, and water resources, and geologic hazards, currently underway by the U.S. Geological 

Survey, the British Geological Survey, and the Afghanistan Geological Survey. 

The compilation of geoscientific references was initially planned to contain only mineralresource-related references. However, the effort soon grew to encompass references related to 

water resources, energy resources, geologic hazards, and other geoscientific disciplines. Version 1 

of the reference database (Eppinger and Sipeki, 2006) contained 1,157 published and 168 

unpublished references, and was available online only. The superseding version 2 was compiled 

through September 2007, and the number of published references is more than doubled at over 

2,400. 

The electronic database is in Microsoft®

 Access 2003 format. An IBM PC-compatible 

computer is required as Microsoft® Access is presently available only for PCs. Version 2 of the 

reference database includes a user-friendly, keyword-searchable interface, and only minimum 

knowledge of the use of Microsoft® Access is required The database was designed using a 1024 X 

768 pixel display with the Microsoft®

 Windows XP theme. The database and document together 

are about 6 MB in size. To avoid error messages, the database file AfghRefDatabase_V2.mbd

should be copied to and opened from the user’s hard disk; attempting to run queries on Microsoft®

Access database files stored on a CD-Rom generates errors, as Access needs space to write 

temporary scratch files.

This database includes both published (n = 2,467) and unpublished (n = 174) references, as 

two separate tables in the Access database. The published references table 

(tblPublishedReferences) includes a GeoRef accession number when available (American 

Geological Institute, 2006, accessed 8/28/2007), which can be used for linking the reference to the 

GeoRef database. Some 1,212 of the 2,467 published references have GeoRef accession numbers 

or record IDs from the GeoRef preview database (accessed 9/5/2007 at 

http://www.agiweb.org/georef/onlinedb/preview.html). The published references table also includes 

the U.S. Geological Survey library call number, if the library contains the holding. Rights to use the 

references in the GeoRef database were purchased from the American Geological Institute so they 

could be re-distributed here without copyright infringement. The unpublished references table 

(tblUnPublishedReferences) contains citations identified as unpublished, internal reports by various 

national geological survey organizations, or partial citations that were discovered during this 

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compilation. Many of the older published and unpublished references identified here are likely 

housed in the archive collection of the Afghanistan Geological Survey, which has been inventoried 

and catalogued in a combined effort by the Afghanistan and British Geological Surveys. For 

information on this cataloging effort, see the website 

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/afghanminerals/reports.htm. 

The published and unpublished reference tables have keyword fields that allow for 

searching capability within the reference database. Keywords are separated into two broad 

categories: scientific and geographic/cultural. The complete lists of keywords are listed 

alphabetically in the database in two separate keyword tables, tblKeywordsScientific and 

tblKeywordsGeographicCultural. The keywords used here follow the spelling and plurality 

conventions recommended in the GeoRef thesaurus (Goodman, 2000). Keywords were gathered 

from reference titles, the overall subject matter, and, for those references listed in GeoRef, from the 

GeoRef keyword fields. 

Original references for this database were in numerous diverse file formats and style 

formats, and came from various sources as indicated in the following paragraph. The references 

were systematically organized and the Microsoft®

 Access database was populated accordingly. 

However, a small percentage of the references were not fully decipherable (for example, a list of 

numbers that did not allow for confident identification of volume, issue, and page number). For 

these references, the sequence of numbers was left as-is in the original form. 

Sources of information for this reference compilation include libraries and colleagues of the 

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the British Geological Survey (BGS), the French Bureau de 

Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM), the Czech Geological Survey (CGS), the German 

Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), the Federal Agency on Mineral 

Resources of the Russian Federation (VSEGEI), and the Centre for Russian and Central Asian 

Mineral Studies (CERCAMS). The American Geological Institute’s GeoRef and GeoRef Preview 

databases, historical documents of the Afghanistan Department of Geological and Mineral Survey, 

and the GoogleTM search engine on the internet were also used. Acknowledgment is given to these 

various sources for the accumulated body of references within this database. Funding for the USGS 

was provided by USAID. 

Keyword-Searchable Database 

Upon opening the database file, AfghanRefDatabase_V2.mdb, the user first sees a splash 

screen that identifies project cooperators (Afghanistan Department of Geological Survey, USAID, 

and USGS) as indicated in figure 1. The splash screen displays momentarily and is followed by the 

main switchboard for the database (fig. 2). On the main switchboard, the user is presented with 

three options: “Search,” “Database Information,” and “Exit Application.” The “Database 

Information” option provides disclaimer information (under “About” and “Tech Support”), the 

option of viewing the database tables themselves (under “Show Database Window”), and the 

option of returning to the main switchboard (fig. 3). Clicking on “Show Database Window” 

displays a warning screen because with the database window displayed, the user has the ability to 

modify data tables. For seasoned Microsoft®

 Access users, this might be the preferred way to 

search the data. 

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Figure 1. The reference database opening splash screen. 

Figure 2. The reference database main switchboard screen. 

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Figure 3. The “Database Information” screen. 

Clicking on the “Search” option on the main switchboard opens the search criteria dialog 

screen (fig. 4). The search criteria screen is divided into four parts: scientific keywords, geographic 

and cultural keywords, year of publication range, and user-entered freeform keywords. At the 

bottom of the screen is the ability to apply the chosen search criteria to the published references, to 

the unpublished references, or to both. To use the scientific and geographic/cultural dialogs, 

simply click on the letter of the alphabet and the keywords starting with that letter appear in a dropdown box. Clicking a keyword from the drop-down list and then clicking “Select” places the 

keyword into the keyword search field. Multiple keywords can be selected. The “Year of 

Publication” on the search screen includes the option of “No Publication Year” to capture the few 

references where no publication year was listed (29 total). If no year range is selected, then all 

publication years are searched. The user-entered freeform keywords search all fields in the tables, 

including the author name fields. Thus, a search for a specific author in the database would be 

done by typing the author name in the freeform keyword box. Multiple freeform keywords should 

be separated with a semicolon (;) and a search for question mark symbol should be done by 

enclosing the question mark in brackets [?]. User-entered freeform keywords can also include the 

wildcard character “*”. As an example, using the wildcard “paleo*” would produce all references 

having “paleo” in them (Paleozoic, paleontology, paleoseismicity, etc.). 

As an example, figure 4 shows a search screen with the following selections: scientific 

keyword = “carbonatites,” geographic keyword = “Khanneshin,” no year range specified (so all 

years are selected). The search criteria include both the published and unpublished tables. With 

these selections chosen, clicking on the “Search” button results in nine references matching the 

above search criteria; eight of the references are published and one is not published (fig. 5). The 

search criteria keywords (in the example, carbonatites and Khanneshin) are listed at the top of the 

“Search Results” screen. On the “Search Results” screen, published references are shown first 

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Figure 4. The search criteria dialog screen. 

8
Figure 5. Example search results screen. 

followed by unpublished references, both in alphabetical order by author. Clicking on the “New 

Search” button brings the user back to the search screen with the previous search criteria 

remaining. This criteria may be modified for a new search. A completely new search can be 

performed by clicking the <Clear All> button; the new search criteria can be entered at this point. 

Those familiar with Microsoft®

 AccessTM may use the sorting and filtering capabilities to further 

refine the results list. 

The Search Results screen includes all fields in the tblPublishedReferences and 

tblUnpublishedReferences tables. Also appearing at the far left of the Search Results screen are 

two additional fields generated by the searching query, Selected and Published. The Selected field 

is used for selecting specific references for output (discussed below) and the Published field is a 

Yes/No field that specifies whether the record is published or unpublished. 

Database Output

Once the user is satisfied with the search results, desired references for output are chosen by 

using the “Selected” field on the “Search Results” screen (fig. 5). Clicking on the “Output to Word 

– USGS Format” button saves the selected results in a Microsoft® Word document, following 

standard USGS style for listing references. The Microsoft® Word document retains the search 

keywords at the top of the document and the words “Published” or “Unpublished” precedes each 

reference. Clicking on the “Output to Text” button saves the selected results as ASCII comma+tab 

delimited text file with a .TXT extension, with the words “Published” or “Unpublished” preceding 

each reference. Clicking on the “Output to Excel - All Fields” button saves all of the information 

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related to the selected reference records in a Microsoft® Excel format spreadsheet. The order of 

references for output to Word, text, or spreadsheet format is the same as that shown on the “Search 

Results” screen (published, then unpublished references; both arranged alphabetically by author). 

Database Structure

The published (tblPublishedReferences) and unpublished (tblUnPublishedReferences) 

reference tables have identical database structures. The database fields and their descriptions are 

listed in table 1. Microsoft® Access table and query naming conventions follow those suggested by 

Reddick (1995, accessed 8/28/2007). The two keyword tables are simply listings of keywords used 

in the reference tables. They each have three fields: a numeric index field, a memo keyword field, 

and a date field specifying when the keyword was entered in the database. 

References Cited 

American Geological Institute, 2006, The GeoRef database: Alexandria, Va., American Geological 

Institute [http://www.agiweb.org/georef/index.html]. 

Eppinger, Robert G. and Sipeki, Julianna, 2006, Database of geoscientific references through 2006 

for Afghanistan, version 1: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2006-1370. Available for 

download at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1370/. 

Goodman, B.A., 2000, GeoRef thesaurus, 9th ed.: Alexandria, Va., American Geological Institute, 

830 p. 

Reddick, Greg, 1995, The Reddick VBA [Visual Basic for Applications] naming conventions: 

Greg Reddick, Available for download at http://www.xoc.net/standards/rvbanc.asp. 

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Table 1. Database field names and descriptions for reference tables. 

Field name Field type Description of field 

Index AutoNumber Key field and database index 

AuthorSenior text First author, in the format: Last name, first 

name (initials or spelled out) 

AuthorSecondary text Additional authors, same format as above, 

listed sequentially as found in reference 

AuthorAll memo Complete author listing for building citation 

PublicationYear text Year of publication 

GEORefAccessionID text ID that ties reference to the AGI GeoRef 

database; blank if no data 

USGSLibraryID text ID that ties reference to the U.S. Geological 

Survey Library system catalogue number; 

blank if no data

OriginalTitle memo Full title of reference as originally found in 

it’s native language 

TranslatedTitle text English title translation for the reference; 

irregularly populated field 

Source memo Source of the reference; for example, journal 

title, volume, series, and page number 

DocumentType text Type of document for the reference 

SourceForDatabase memo Mechanism in which the reference was 

found for this database 

Language text Language of original reference 

EnglishSummary text For non-English references, note whether 

there is an English translation in the paper; 

irregularly populated 

ScientificKeywords memo Scientific keywords; see 

tblKeywords_Scientific for complete list of 

keyword possibilities 

GeographicCulturalKeywords memo Geographic and cultural keywords; see 

tblKeywords_Geographic&Cultural for 

complete list of keyword possibilities 

OtherID text Secondary ID for the reference, such as the 

reference code for a different library; 

irregularly populated field 

AuthorSeniorAltSpelling text First author, spelling as found in original 

source, if different from Author_Senior 

AuthorSecondaryAltSpelling text Additional authors, spelling as found in 

original source, if different from 

Author_Secondary 

Comment text Comment related to reference; irregularly 

populated field 

DateAddedToDatabase Date/Time Date in which reference was added to this 

Access database 

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