Description | Records of the Geological Society's Publications Department, 1906-2009, notably including:
Administrative files relating to the production of the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society', later 'Journal of the Geological Society', 1906-2003; 'Memoirs of the Geological Society', 1965-2005; Miscellaneous Paper Series, 1979; 'Petroleum Geoscience', 1994-2005; 'Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology', later 'Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology', 1992-2004; Special Publications, 1963-2009; Special Report series, 1971-1978. |
Administrative History | Like most functions of the Society, publishing is overseen by a committee or series of committees. However as the number of publications increased, more staff were recruited who took over much of the responsibility for the everyday production.
Until the late 1980s, all of the Society's publications were externally printed and distributed. The Geological Society Publishing House (GSPH) in Bath was established in 1988 and now produces all of the publications in house as well as publishing journals for other organisations. |
Arrangement | This section has had to be revised as much of the files were split illogically with the publications committees series (GSL/COM/P). By rule of thumb, records of the 19th and mid 20th century publications can still be found in GSL/COM/P section, the rest has been moved to this series. There are exceptions, where moving or not moving material would break up a series.
Most of the material from the 1970s had no order, compounded by the fact that it was incomplete as many files had been disposed of in the 1980s as part of the then records management programme. The section has been arranged functionally where possible, mainly under the publication series. |