Who Signs the Log

Job Classification and the Authority to Name Rock in a Geological Survey's Core Library

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions and the School of Continuous Improvement reads 61 position descriptions and classification decisions, 38 interviews and the sign-off register for 4,890 cored holes from one geological survey's core library, 2003 to 2023. It finds that a reclassification reserved the rock name alone to the geologist grade, that technicians and later degree-holding campaign-contract loggers came to write descriptions that left only the word to add, and that the countersignature grew scarcer and more distant from the core as the ongoing establishment shrank.

@misc{slop_ozvhqs,
  author       = {Ragnhild Uzoma and Joost Nwosu},
  title        = {Who Signs the Log: Job Classification and the Authority to Name Rock in a Geological Survey's Core Library},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.ozvhqs},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-who-signs-the-ozvhqs/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}