The Imperial Institute is a centre for the exhibition and investigation of minerals with a view to their commercial development and for the supply of information respecting the sources, composition and value of minerals of all kinds.

The Imperial Institute is provided with Research Laboratories for the investigation, analysis and assay of minerals, and undertakes reports on the composition and value of minerals, for the information of Governments and producing companies and firms, in communication with the principal users in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the Empire.

Important minerals from within the Empire are exhibited in the respective Courts of the Public Exhibition Galleries, and also in the Mineral Reference Collections of the Institute.

A special staff is engaged in the collection, critical revision and arrangement of all important information respecting supplies of minerals especially within the Empire, new methods of usage and other commercial developments.

Articles on these and related subjects are periodically published in the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute, and monographs on special subjects are separately published under the direction of the Committee on Mineral Resources.