Cataloging historical tsunami marigrams from microfilm images

The U.S. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) has more than 3,700 tsunami marigram (tide gauge) records in both image and paper format, capturing worldwide observations of more than 390 tsunami events from 1854 to 1994. The majority of these tsunami marigram records were scanned to high-resolution digital TIFF images during the U.S. NOAA Climate Data Modernization Program (CDMP) which ran from 2000 to 2011. Additional, uncatalogued physical records exist on microfilm rolls and paper at the David Skaggs Research Center (DSRC) in Boulder, Colorado, USA. For many tsunami events prior to 1994, data resides only on the marigram records, making them of great historical significance. Six of the 13 uncatalogued microfilm rolls have been scanned by NCEI to produce 3,548 TIFF images. During 2025, we will be working to catalog, archive, and make these images discoverable and accessible online. We will identify any duplicates by comparing to the existing catalog of marigrams already archived at NCEI. Given the large number of uncatalogued images, we are exploring automated approaches to harvesting metadata from the images to aid in cataloging. We will present the project background, goals, and initial results of this effort.