Contains the administrative and historical records of the Survey from 1835. The archive contains official files, correspondence, maps, photographs and many items dealing with the history of geology in general.

This dataset contains parametric data (epicentre, magnitude, depth, etc) for over one million earthquakes worldwide. The dataset has been compiled gradually over a period of thirty years from original third-party catalogues, and parameters have not been revised by BGS, although erroneous entries have been flagged where found. The dataset is kept in two versions: the complete "master" version, in which all entries for any single earthquake from contributing catalogue are preserved, and the "pruned" version, in which each earthquake is represented by a single entry, selected from the contributing sources according to a hierarchy of preferences. The pruned version, which is intended to be free from duplicate entries for the same event, provides a starting point for studies of seismicity and seismic hazard anywhere in the world.

The BGS database of geological maps is an index into BGS holdings of modern and historical published geological maps, geological standards and field slips, and also contains a range of other map series, including geophysical maps, geochemical maps, hydrogeological maps, thematic maps and other small-scale miscellaneous non-series maps. Historical vertical and horizontal sections, as well as indices to colours, are also included. The database comprises map metadata, including the title, theme, survey and revision years, publication years, mapped geological theme, base material, map function, colouration, approval status and the spatial extent of each map sheet. An accompanying file store contains high-resolution JPEG2000 scans for delivery, as well as various digital master and delivery formats. For a small number of maps, no scan exists. In total, the database contains over 240,000 scans of over 130,000 maps and field slips. The majority of the maps in the database cover Great Britain, but other regions are also represented, including a historical series of 1-inch maps of Ireland, 6-inch maps of the Isle of Man, 1:25 000 scale maps of the Channel Islands, and various overseas maps. The database contains a record of all geological maps produced by the British Geological Survey and its predecessors since the commencement of systematic geological mapping in the 1830s. The BGS Maps Database is mostly an archive of previous BGS maps, and is not the same as the latest BGS digital mapping. The maps within the database may differ significantly from BGS digital vector mapping. Further information about BGS digital vector mapping is available on the BGS website, under 'BGS Datasets'. The database has evolved over time, originally being a series of discrete databases. These databases have now been aggregated into a single dataset. BGS published maps, as well as 1:10 560 and 1:10 000 large-scale geological maps of England and Wales, and Scotland, are available through the BGS Maps Portal. Field slips and some thematic maps are not included on the BGS Maps Portal. The information about a map is normally a transcription from the map itself. Sometimes key information such as the title may not be actually printed on the map. Where this is the case the information is supplied in square brackets, e.g. [Kirk Maiden]. Information in square brackets means the information is supplied by the cataloguer and is not transcribed from the item.

This Web service provides layers which are spatial indexes to the coverage of BGS (British Geological Survey) geological, geophysical, and hydrogeological maps from various different map series held by BGS in the National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC). The layers include the spatial footprint of each map, and metadata including the map title, map series, nominal survey year, copyright year, scale, base material, colouration, the availability of an image, and, if available, a link to an image of the map. It includes maps from the start of systematic geological survey work in the 1830s, through to more recent BGS mapping. The maps referenced by this Web service are historical, and are not the same as the latest digital geological mapping from BGS.