Maureen Wilks

Geological Librarian & Manager Geologic Information Center

New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources
New Mexico Tech
Socorro, NM 87801

(575) 835-6333 fax
Tel: (575) 835-5322

Maureen Wilks is the Geological Librarian. She oversees the Geological Information Center, which has a specialized library on the geology of New Mexico. She maintains numerous databases including the Bibliography of geology, hydrology and mineral technology of New Mexico, the New Mexico Geochronological Database, the New Mexico Map Database, the NM Mines and associated Mine Plat databases, and the Historic Photograph Database. She also assists in the Publication Sales department. Maureen arrived in New Mexico from Great Britain in 1987 to pursue a Ph.D in geochemistry at New Mexico Tech and met her future husband Bob MacLeod, an amazing electronic wizard under the hood of her beat up old car. In 1995 she started to work part-time at the Bureau to begin to convert their paper collections into more accessible digital datasets. In her other part time position she is an artist and writer. In 2000 she collaborated with photographer Thomas Wiewandt in writing the text for award winning The Southwest Inside Out: An illustrated guide to the land and its history. When not working she is out hiking in the desert, or scrambling over the mountains of the Southwest . In the hot summer months she likes to rescue snakes from highways and neighbors backyards with the assistance of her husband who has been passionate about snakes since he was six years old. She also chases after flash floods and photographs, lizards, toads, spiders, insects, wild flowers and wild weather. Since 2001 she has been working with her digital photographs of wildlife and wildflowers transforming them into fine art pieces.

Education:

Ph.D., 1991 New Mexico Tech
M. S., 1986 University of Saskatchewan , Canada
B.A., 1982 Oxford University , Great Britain

Current Projects:

Mine Map Initiative: Organizing, cataloguing, georeferencing, preserving, and scanning the historic coal mine map collection. The mine maps are a smaller collection of the NM Map Database (see below). Funding for this project has come from two grants, one from MSHA (Mine Safety & Health Administration) and OSM (The Office of Surface Mining). In 2012 completed a study on the abandoned and inactive coal mines of the San Juan Basin, excluding the Gallup Coal Field, New Mexico (OFR 549) with Gretchen Hoffman, Senior Coal Geologist. This study followed on from the 2010 study on abandoned and inactive coal mines of the Gallup Coal Field, McKinley County, New Mexico (OFR 530)
Mining Archives: Organizing, cataloging and scanning the mining archives of New Mexico. Creating a database of mines in New Mexico based on the NM Mine File Catalog (16,700 mines now entered) with links to more detailed Section Township Range files (6000 file cards scanned and cataloged into a database) and over 2000 mine plats, now scanned and cataloged. Work has now begun on scanning and cataloging the thousands of reports both published and unpublished, accompanying mine maps, newspaper articles, assay reports, and photograph by countys. Photographs are entered into our Historic Photo Collection (see below).
Updating and maintaining the NM Map Database. In 2000 funds from the USGS enabled us to set up a Map Database to catalogue all known geological, hydrological and geophysical maps published by the bureau. This also includes MS and Ph.D thesis maps. As new quadrangle maps are mapped this information is updated annually to the National Geologic Map Database. In 2012 uploaded 400 PDF images of bureau geological maps (GM series, Open-file Reports, OF-GM Series, Bulletin, Memoir and Circular Maps) to USGS Map View
Updating and maintaining the Bibliographic Database of New Mexico.
Scanning and OCR of out of print Bureau publications.
Updating and maintaining the Historic Photo Collection. To date 6,000 historic photographs have been scanned and catalogued into a database.
Collaborate with the Mining and Minerals Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department to establish procedures to link databases among agencies.
Updating and maintaining the New Mexico Geochronological Database. Currently just over 4000 ages have been stored in the database.
Provide updates of unit names and references to the National Geologic Map Database – Geologic Names Lexicon “Geolex”

Recent Publications:

Hoffman, Gretchen K.; Wilks Maureen, Aquiring and georeferencing coal mine maps: San Juan Basin including the Gallup Coal Field, New Mexico, New Mexico Bureau Geology Mineral Resources, Open-file Report, 549 , DVD, 2012.
Hoffman, Gretchen K.; Wilks Maureen, Abandoned and inactive coal mines of the Gallup Coal Field, McKinley County, New Mexico, New Mexico Bureau Geology Mineral Resources, Open-file Report, 530, DVD, 2010.
New Mexico Geologic Highway Map, compiled by Maureen E. Wilks, 2005. New Mexico Geological Society and New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, 1 double-sided field-durable sheet containing text and figures, scale 1:1,000,000
McLemore, Virginia T.; Hoffman, Gretchen K.; Mansell, Mark; Jones, Glen R.; Krueger, Christian B.; Wilks, Maureen, Mining districts in New Mexico, Open-file Report 494, CD-ROM, 2005

Maureen Wilks

Education:

Current Projects:

Recent Publications:

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