Soil Survey Database Description
The Funk Library holds the vast majority of published U.S. State Soil Survey maps. This database allows you to search these holdings and locate call numbers for individual maps at the Funk Library.
Map Availability
While the Funk Library has many U.S. soil maps, it does not have all of them. If a map is unavailable, it may be available at another library. If you are on the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign campus, you may want to check the Online Catalog for other UIUC Library holdings.
Organization of Soil Survey Maps in the Funk Library
The surveys have been assigned various call numbers at the Funk Library. All U.S. county surveys taken between 1899-1922 were published by the U.S. Bureau of Soils as one continuous series. These are arranged by year and located under call number 631UN36. U.S. county surveys published from 1923 to 1966 were published by the USDA Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. These were also published as one continuous series, and are arranged by year under the call number 631UN37S. In 1966 the USDA Soil Conservation Service, in cooperation with state agricultural experiment stations, began publishing soil surveys. These surveys are published as individual state series, and each state series has been assigned its own call number.
Search Tips
The "State Code" must be filled in. If you just fill this in, you'll get a list of all surveys for that state. Filling in a county name is optional.
Truncation
You can truncate the name of a county to a shorter form and search using this term. For example, if you type in "green" in the counties field, you will get hits on "Green", "Greene" or "Greenlee" counties. This is helpful if you are not sure of the exact name of a county or area. Do not use any truncation codes, such as *, $, or ?
Fields searched
When you type in the name of a county in the County or Area search box, the database searches the entire Counties field and the entire Notes field of each record. For example, if you are looking for the county "Ft. Apache", you can type in "Apache" only, and the record for Ft. Apache will be brought up, along with any records that reference this county in the notes field.
Finding all Surveys for a Single State
If you want to see all maps for one state, type in the two-letter code for the name of the state only. This search will list maps alphabetically by county.
Finding Maps for a Particular County within a State
If you want to search for a county or area within a state, first fill in the two-letter code for the state; then fill in the county name. If you are not sure how to spell the name of the county, you can just type in the first few letters in the name of the county.
Finding Surveys for a County when You are not Sure of the State
You can not use the current search engine to do this.
Instead, please search at the NRCS site to determine the state.
Then come back and search our database, filling in the correct two-letter state code.
Finding Cross references
If a map includes areas of several counties, this information will be listed in the notes field. Because the database searches for county information in the notes field, the name of the county you type in will bring up all maps that include parts of this county, or reference it in some other way in the notes.
Abbreviations
Ft. is used for Fort.Reservation is NOT abbreviated.
For more information about the Soil Surveys in the Funk Library, please see out "About" file.
