The collection consists of borehole drill logs, site plans, borehole location plans, geological plans and completion plans for opencast coal sites in Scotland and Northern England. It includes records deposited by the Directorate of Opencast Coal Production (DOCP) and its successors, National Coal Board (NCB), British Coal and numerous private and licensed opencast mine. The NCB Scottish Area records are arranged by the NCB opencast site number. Many records of cored 'diamond' boreholes are held in the BGS Scottish Borehole Journal records. Northern England opencast records are mainly held with the ex-Newcastle Borehole Records. Copies of completion plans for Scotland are also held in the Coal Mine Abandonment Plan collection available on microfilm aperture cards. Opencast sites are indexed in the Land Survey Record Index (LSRI) database. The cored 'diamond' boreholes are indexed on Single Onshore Borehole Index (SOBI).