English: Figure 12. A single, monolithic system design shared by all agencies is unlikely. Rather, interoperability among the many agency databases linked together by the NGMDB database is the most logical design philosophy. In this diagram, we envision that map data from one agency (the Kentucky Geological Survey, http://www.uky.edu/KGS/) will be translated into reference standards (the data model and science language standards adopted by the NGMDB) and translated out to the criteria required by another agency (the Idaho Geological Survey’s Geologic Map Data Model, http://www.idahogeology.org/Lab/datamodel.htm). This approach also could permit the NGMDB to coordinate the translation and display of multiple agency databases. In this diagram, the reference standards are represented by a schematic of the draft NGMDB data model (discussed in another paper in this volume) and an example of science language from Folk (1954, fig. 1a) showing a rock classification based on mud-sand-gravel content.