f An other Gis: The national geoelectric information system

The extensive use of electromagnetic geophysical methods in Hungary was started in the 50- ies by the Eötvös Loránd Geophysical Institute (ELGI). Tens of thousands of DC soundings have been measured, reported and closed to files since the first systems started to collect geophysical data. Long before the PC age, most of them were processed by hand, using precalculated curve albums. In the store-rooms of ELGI 40 meters of geophysical documentation was sleeping it's Rosen-bud dream and waiting for the kiss of modern information technology. In 1998 a long term data archiving project has been started in the ELGI. The aim of this project is to save the tremendous amount of geophysical information that has been collected in Hungary during the last decades, to build it into a GIS - database system and bring it back to life. The database is proposed to include all available DC and TDEM sounding information and to assure access to gravity, to ground and airborne magnetic data as well. Data archiving started with the engineering geophysical measurements carried out on and around the lake Balaton from 1974. Sorting out and reorganising the old documentation, to prepare it to uploading is a very long process with high man-power requirements, but definitely pays off, if we look at the results. In 1998 about 3500 DC soundings from that area were entered, in 1999 an other 3000 is going to be entered into the system. All these data will be available again for geophysical reprocessing and environmental analysis.