All scientific and technical investigations require access to basic fundamental data. The capture and long term preservation of data are required to address a wide range of scientific issues. The National Research Council released a report entitled Preserving Scientific Data on Our Physical Universe (1995), that took a broad look at the challenges of scientific data preservation and management in Federal Agencies. The report concluded "a general problem prevalent among all scientific disciplines is the low priority attached to data management and preservation by most agencies. Experience indicates that new research projects tend to get much more attention than the handling of data from old ones, even though the payoff from optimal utilization of existing data may be greater." No discipline is in greater need of an increased focus on data preservation than the geosciences, where private-sector downsizing and public-sector budgetary constraints have combined to jeopardize vast quantities of valuable geoscientific data critical to our understanding of the Earth's environment and natural resources.