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The outcomes for projects C19030, C15045 and C12044 have been UPDATED and are available at C22026.
Full results are available from www.DigDatabase.com.au
A large body of information on all aspects of coal-mine rehabilitation in central Queensland has accumulated since the early 1960s. However, the information contained in company or site-sponsored reports, research papers, conference proceedings and journal articles is stored in numerous locations, is fragmented, and not necessarily accessible. Staff turnover at mine sites, within companies, service organisations and regulating departments is high, and current and future workers may not even be aware that work in a particular area has already been conducted. This can lead to some obvious problems, including unnecessary repetition of past work, initiation of ill-informed avenues of investigation or being unable to learn from past mistakes. Considerable time may also be wasted in defending a particular rehabilitation approach or procedure.
Much progress has been achieved in our understanding of rehabilitation issues in central Queensland, assisted in no small way by key individuals of long-standing who maintain some continuity of knowledge. Such people won't be available indefinitely, and with an ever-increasing quantity of information accumulating, the situation will become more pressing. Clearly, there is a strong need to draw together the accumulated experience and information currently available into a single source that is practical and informative in content, and readily accessible to all interested parties.
This project sought to produce a single source reference ?document' containing an annotated bibliography of existing reports, research and other material focussed specifically on mine rehabilitation issues in the central Queensland coalfields. The outcome from this project is a fully searchable bibliographical database available on the world wide web at www.cmlr.uq.edu.au . At the present time, 2,215 entries are in the database comprising conference proceedings, reports instigated by industry collaborating with research bodies, internal company reports, journal articles, books, and student theses. While the volume of literature contained within the database is substantial, it is known that many more reports and site-held information exists that is yet to make its way into the collection.
The subsequent evolution of this project will see the development of strategies and approaches that seek to maximise the progressive contributory inputs into the database and thereby maximise its value to the end users. The database has been structured to allow ready expansion and will continue to incorporate advances in functionality as feedback on the current version and its useability is received.
An 
e-newsletter has also been published for this project, highlighting its significance for the industry.