This digital product is developed from a database of published drillhole information for the province of Nova Scotia. This layer represents drillholes that have one or more references associated with them. A reference would include when the hole was initially drilled (reference 1) but also if later work was done to sample core (reference 2) or do geophysics down the hole (reference 3).

The database is maintained by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines (DEM), Geoscience and Mines Branch (GMB). The digital product was created by the DEM GMB staff. The database was developed from information contained in publicly available mineral exploration assessment reports, open file reports and other GMB and Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) publications. The database provides approximate coordinate locations for many of the drillholes, and also provides a source reference on each drillhole. The digital product contains a layer for the drillholes (d003nsdh), a layer for references (d003nsdf) and a layer for drillholes with core (d003nsdx) .

There are 27,300 drillholes in the database and there are over 35,000 references associated with these holes. A single drillhole will have one or more references associated with it. This generally consists of a reference when the hole is drilled and subsequent references when further work is done on the hole (e.g. extensions, geophysics, sampling). There are 6,686 drillholes with core associated with them at the DNR Core Libray in Stellarton.