## 3 Approaches to Managing Soil and Landscape Information and Knowledge
### Improving Access to Legacy Information  
[PERSON] _et al._ (1990) describe \"grey literature\" as documents (such as technical reports, theses and conference proceedings) that are not available through conventional commercial channels [28]. [PERSON] (2000) provides a review of the trends and evolution in the development of grey literature and concludes that, despite problems of quality, stability and intellectual property, the amount of information accessible on the internet has contributed to changing the expectations and behaviour of users, introducing models of information transfer closer to direct communication between producers and users [29]. In many research and development organisations, grey literature documents are valuable information assets and need to be carefully curated [30]. The internet has provided a number of opportunities to increase dissemination of such documents, both internally to an organisation and to a wider external audience. Figure 11: Presentation of a soil site description web page with annotated examples of data and information presentation and linking. \(\copyright\) State of Victoria, Department of Primary Industries 1997 Reproduced with permission. Capturing legacy information is a critical knowledge management function provided by the VRO project, and the website is a repository for many grey literature documents. Of these, 80% are legacy reports associated with former departments that are now only available in limited numbers in hardcopy format and can be difficult to access. Some have never been formally published. Subject matter specialists provide advice on (and sometimes access to) the most relevant legacy reports to be included on the website. A Soil and Land Survey Directory ([[http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/soil-land-directory](http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/soil-land-directory)]([http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/soil-land-directory](http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/soil-land-directory))) was established on the VRO website in 1997 to facilitate spatially-based access to over 100 legacy soil and land survey reports printed over the past 70 years. Users can search for these reports, on either a local government or catchment management area basis, or by a keyword search. Reports are located within the website in a related regional and/or content area. An example of a web page incorporating downloadable legacy report information is shown in Figure 13.  
Figure 12: Overview soil map for the “Sodosol” Soil Order in the West Gippsland region. (c) State of Victoria, Department of Primary Industries 1997 Reproduced with permission. Maps from legacy reports that are now scarce have been made separately available in downloadable forms suitable for printing. These include over 80 detailed irrigation region soil maps produced in the 1960s that are still widely used. Historic maps that depict land use and land degradation in 1944 are also available and have proven useful to users assessing change over time. Some retired specialists have contributed previously unpublished information, maps and slides that have been incorporated into web-based information. An example is an overview map of gully erosion density, based on intensive aerial photo interpretation from the 1970s and reassessed in 1982 by [PERSON] (unpublished) that still remains the only overview of gully erosion in Victoria. The map was used as part of a Journal article by [PERSON] in 1993 [31] but only digitised in 2001 from the original hardcopy map and made available on VRO. Data on tunnel erosion occurrence in Victoria provided by Dr [PERSON] [32] has also been digitised and combined with the gully erosion density data to create a new map depicting the distribution of tunnel erosion in relation to gully density in Victoria (Figure 14). Regions can be identified where gully and tunnel erosion co-occur, and elsewhere where tunnel erosion is significant but not gully erosion, due to different soil and landscape factors.