Wismut allows access to technical archive documents
Wismut GmbH has allowed the general public access to part of their scientific-technical documents dealing with the topic of mining during the activities of the company. From now on it is possible to research independently on the Internet page of Wismut in currently 15 categories under the headline Technisches Archiv (Technical Archive) and to apply for complete access to the documents.
The technical archive of Wismut GmbH includes about 9500 documents from the time of active mining. Approximately 4000 documents belong to the holdings of the Scientific Technical Centre (WTZ) founded in 1966. The topics dealt with by the WTZ in close cooperation with the mining and processing companies as well as German and Soviet research institutes include, amongst other things, extraction methods, ventilation, geomechanics, leaching, processing, development of devices and filling.
The existing mining engineering knowledge was permanently extended even after the end of the active mining period and was integrated into concept planning, also internationally. The Wismut know-how is in demand nationally and internationally. In order to maintain the unique scientific-technical mining archive of Wismut and to make it also available to third parties, since the beginning of 2016 the documents have been reviewed and evaluated. The documents of the Department Research and Development of the WTZ exist in paper form, and the majority of them as scanned documents. After registration, these documents can be viewed in the Wismut company archive in Chemnitz.
As regards reading and evaluation of the documents, during a first phase, documents were selected that could be of special interest for subsequent use. In this process it was attempted to select and classify the documents according to criteria as objective as possible (state-of-the-art, literature, Internet investigations, state of development of drilling technology, measuring and analytical instruments).
The documents selected so far were assigned to 15 subject areas: roofing, industrial medicine, processing, mining safety, mining technology, ventilation, dust abatement, drilling technology, geology, geomechanics, leaching, measuring methods, radiometry, environmental protection and filling. The contents of the documents registered are included in summaries consisting of about 100 to 200 words. At present, 400 extracts can be researched on the website of Wismut GmbH. For those interested the original documents can be viewed locally after prior agreement.
