Overview

In November 2017, a group of undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and professors met at Arizona State University Tempe to begin a grueling digitization effort.

Recalibration of the complete thermodynamic mineralogical database underlying MELTS is one of the major goals of the ENKI project. The first major step in this process is obtaining the underlying laboratory measurements in digital format to make them available for calibration. As an initial major goal, we focused on the pure (stoichiometric) minerals database of Berman 1988, which maps out the minerals in the Na₂O-K₂O-CaO-MgO-FeO-Fe₂O₃-Al₂O₃-SiO₂-TiO₂-H₂O-CO₂ system. The underlying laboratory measurements upon which this thermodynamic database was calibrated amounts to a colossal data collection, including experiments from about 200 publications. Unfortunately, nearly all of these data are locked away in printed tables, figures, and text descriptions.

Outcome

At the datathon, we took a decisive step toward freeing these data from the confines of decades-old printed journals. We collected together electronic PDFs of all of the relevant articles. To digitize the data, we devised an Excel format that extends the well-established LEPR-database format, allowing for the storage of more experimental metadata and greater detail on the phase reaction results. Participants, comprising a mixture of undergrad and graduate students, postdocs, and professors then aided in capturing and storing the relevant data from each publication by digitizing figures and tables and details from methods sections. Over the course of the week, the participants provided critical feedback for the improvement of Excel data format, as well as the development of validation notebooks, and the creation of a git repository for the data collection project called geothermodat (hosted on gitlab, requires login).