USGIN Website Archive

Offline archive of usgin.org (U.S. Geoscience Information Network), harvested from the Wayback Machine in February 2026. The site is no longer maintained; this archive preserves its content for reference and deposit on Zenodo.

What is USGIN?

USGIN was a distributed, interoperable data network for the geosciences, developed as a partnership between the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), managed by the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS). Funded by NSF under award EAR-0753154, USGIN provided standardized web services, metadata catalogs, and interchange formats to make data from state and federal geological surveys accessible online using open standards and common protocols.

USGIN was also the technology platform behind the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS), supported by DOE grants EE-0002850 and EE-0001120.

Archive contents

Total size: ~248 MB (208 MB from lab.usgin.org content, 40 MB from usgin.org)

Main website (usgin.org)

Directory	Content
index.html	Landing page with archive resource links
content/	28 pages covering USGIN concepts, objectives, best practices, data provider workflow, FAQ, glossary, and tutorials
page/	Special pages: About, NGDS Atlas, Open Data Solutions, How USGIN Works, USGIN in Action, Host Your Own Data
documentation/	Specification documentation index with links to live specs at usgin.github.io/usginspecs
tutorials/	Tutorial index: deploying GeoServer, metadata, web services, ArcMap geodatabases, NGDS content models
specifications/	Categorized listing of USGIN specifications (metadata, web services, data standards, URI profiles)
glossary/	30+ defined terms (ArcGIS, CSW, GeoSciML, HTTP, metadata, OGC, WFS, XML, etc.)
opportunities/	Archived job postings
node/	Drupal node pages with additional content
GenericMetadataModelDoc/	Enterprise Architect model documentation (content pages not captured; .EAP file available in labUSGINDrupalContent)
sites/	CSS, JavaScript, images, and PDFs (Drupal theme assets)
modules/, misc/	Drupal core CSS and UI icons

Lab content archive (labUSGINDrupalContent/)

89 documents (208 MB) extracted from the usgin/lab-usgin-site GitHub repository. These files were originally hosted on lab.usgin.org (a Drupal 7 site now offline). Organized into 10 categories:

Category	Files	Content
specifications/	19	USGIN ISO metadata profiles (v0.9.1–1.1.4), URI schemes (v1.0.1–1.0.3), GeoSciML Portrayal Cookbook, controlled vocabulary guidelines, service naming conventions, metadata conceptual model
tutorials/	8	Metadata Wizard tutorial, GeoNetwork Eclipse setup, CI_OnlineResource guide, schema validation, ETL documentation
presentations/	14	Conference posters and slides from GSA 2011, AGU 2011, EGU 2012, ESRI UC 2011, CSIG 2011; NGDS poster; USGIN architecture posters
software/	5	CSW Client v2/v3, AZGS CSW tools, URI resolver packages (generic + USGIN)
xslt/	4	CSW GetRecords/GetRecordByID request/response stylesheets, WMS-to-ISO 19119 transform
xml-schemas/	3	NGDS Heat Flow and Borehole Temperature content models, GeoServer datastore config
scripts/	7	Python examples for CSW transactions, ISO 19139-to-MEF conversion, XSLT transforms, WMS-to-CSW ETL
images/logos/	21	Organization logos (USGIN, NGDS, AASG, AZGS, NSF, USGS, DOE, OGC, W3C, etc.) and software logos (GeoServer, GeoNetwork, ESRI, Drupal, Python)
images/banners/	4	Site interface banners (AASG, DOE, NSF, USGS)
images/diagrams/	4	USGIN system overview, GeoServer+GeoNetwork architecture, URI Venn diagram, Metadata Wizard flowchart

See labUSGINDrupalContent/index.html for a browsable table of contents with titles, descriptions, and file sizes.

Key topics

• Distributed network architecture for geoscience data sharing
• Metadata standards: ISO 19115/19139, FGDC-CSDGM, USGIN metadata profiles
• Web services: OGC Catalog Service for the Web (CSW), Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Map Service (WMS)
• Data interchange formats: GeoSciML, XML-based content models, GML simple features
• URI policies: Dereferenceable HTTP URIs for geoscience resources
• Geothermal data: National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) content models and services
• Open data: Compliance guides, data provider workflows, best practices
• Tools: GeoNetwork, GeoServer, PostGIS, ArcGIS integration, CSW clients, metadata wizards

Browsing the archive

Open index.html in a web browser, or serve locally:

python -m http.server -d /path/to/usgin-website-archive 8080
# Then visit http://localhost:8080

Navigation works via relative links. CSS styling is preserved. Some pages reference Drupal JavaScript that may not function fully offline.

Known limitations

• Dead external links: 77 external URLs are no longer reachable (marked inline as [Dead Link, url]). See dead_links_report.json for details. Major dead domains include lab.usgin.org, catalog.usgin.org, repository.usgin.org, schemas.usgin.org, and geothermaldata.org.
• 3 specification links restored: Links to USGIN ISO Metadata, Metadata Recommendations, and URI Scheme specs on the documentation page now point to live copies at https://usgin.github.io/usginspecs/.
• Dynamic content: Search forms, login pages, and newsletter signups do not function offline and have been removed.
• Enterprise Architect model: The GenericMetadataModelDoc/ HTML report relied on JavaScript-loaded content pages that were never captured by the Wayback Machine. The page now displays an explanatory note and links to the .EAP project file.
• 157 failed asset downloads: Mostly old Drupal node pages and glossary terms that were not fully archived by the Wayback Machine.

How this archive was created

Phase 1: Wayback Machine harvest (usgin.org)

The harvest_wayback.py script downloaded the usgin.org website from the Wayback Machine snapshot dated June 12, 2025. The process:

1. CDX Discovery — Queried the Wayback Machine CDX API (web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=usgin.org/*) to discover all captured URLs. Found 479 entries, deduplicated to 250 unique URLs.

2. Download — Fetched each URL using the Wayback Machine id_ flag (web.archive.org/web/{timestamp}id_/{url}) to retrieve original content without the Wayback toolbar. All 250 URLs downloaded successfully.

3. Asset discovery — Parsed downloaded HTML and CSS files for additional assets (images, scripts, stylesheets) not in the CDX results. Found 158 additional URLs; 1 downloaded successfully, 157 returned 404.

4. Link rewriting — Rewrote all internal href/src attributes in 59 HTML files and url() references in 8 CSS files to use relative paths for offline browsing.

Result: 251 files, ~40 MB. Metadata recorded in manifest.json.

Phase 2: Dead link cleanup

Scanned all HTML files for external links and tested each via HTTP HEAD/GET requests. Dead links (HTTP 400/500/timeout) were replaced inline with text [Dead Link, url]. False positives from bot-blocking sites (drupal.org, w3.org, whitehouse.gov, nsf.gov, mysql.com) were identified and restored. Links to geothermaldata.org (responding but with no content) were also removed.

Three specification links on documentation/index.html were matched to live equivalents at https://usgin.github.io/usginspecs/ and restored.

Non-functional pages (Drupal login form, MailChimp newsletter signup, confirmation pages) were removed. Drupal navigation sidebars with dead links were removed from 12 pages. Results recorded in dead_links_report.json.

Phase 3: Lab content extraction (lab.usgin.org)

Content documents were downloaded from the usgin/lab-usgin-site GitHub repository (sites/default/files/ directory). The lab.usgin.org Drupal site is offline, but the repository preserves file attachments (though not database-stored page content). 89 documents organized into 10 categories with a generated index.html table of contents.

Phase 4: Encoding and cleanup

Fixed 12 UTF-8 replacement characters (U+FFFD, originally non-breaking spaces from ISO-8859-1 source) in the main index.html. Added an Archive Resources navigation section to the main page linking to all major content sections.

Tools used

• Python 3 with requests and beautifulsoup4
• Wayback Machine CDX API and id_ download flag
• GitHub API and raw.githubusercontent.com for lab content
• curl for file downloads

File manifest

File	Purpose
index.html	Archive landing page with navigation
manifest.json	Harvest metadata: timestamps, file list, statistics
dead_links_report.json	Dead link scan results and restoration log
harvest_wayback.py	Python script used to harvest from Wayback Machine
labUSGINDrupalContent/index.html	Table of contents for lab content

License

The original usgin.org content was produced by the Arizona Geological Survey on behalf of AASG, with funding from NSF and DOE. This archive is provided for reference and preservation purposes.

Citation

If referencing this archive, please cite:

USGIN Website Archive. Harvested from the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org, snapshot 2025-06-12) in February 2026. Original content by the Arizona Geological Survey, Association of American State Geologists, and U.S. Geological Survey.