The Map Library in the New Millennium

Citation

McIlwaine, J. (2002), "The Map Library in the New Millennium", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 210-210. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.36.3.210.5

Any work produced by the team of Parry and Perkins in the cartographic field can be approached with confidence. Their World Mapping Today (Butterworths, London, 1987) and its second edition (Bowker‐Saur, London, 2000) and Guide to Information Sources in Cartography (Bowker‐Saur, London, 1990) have established themselves as essential reference tools in the cartographic field. The present work is a very different venture: not an attempt to produce a standard reference source, but rather an up‐to‐the‐minute snapshot of issues facing map libraries in the new century. Contributors were asked “to re‐examine the role of the map library, and assess its status and relevance in the context of digital/electronic technology, of changing user needs, and of social, political and economic changes”. The remit was “to produce the book quickly presenting lively views on a range of contemporary issues”.

Of the 15 contributors, only six are actually map librarians: the others come from the academic world of geography, cartography and other geographic information system (GIS) related fields, together with a map publisher and a map dealer. As in any such compilation the resulting text is somewhat uneven, but nevertheless stimulating. The editors claim to have done very little editing of contributions as received, and hope that the disparities in the way in which topics are treated by different authors will itself be revealing of national attitudes. Of the contributors six are from the UK, six from North America, two from The Netherlands and one from New Zealand. Most contributions represent a parochial view, with authors writing about the contexts they know best. This is understandable but it would have been good to have had one or two wider more international overviews. Most contributors assume that their remit is to talk about digital data and we have chapters on “The changing role of GIS in the map room”, “Offline digital maps”, “Perspectives on map use and map users in the digital era”, “Web resources and the map library”. It would have been useful to have had the URLs discussed in the body of the text of this last chapter, gathered together under references at the end, as in the chapter by Jan Smits, “Metadata and standards: confusion and convergence”, which has a masterly and comprehensive list of references and Web sites. A nod to paper maps is provided by Christopher Baruth’s “Old maps in a modern world”, although even here the emphasis is on the potential for digital scanning of these in order to make them compatible for the map user with modern digital mapping. He makes the potent point that there is “no clearing‐house of scanned cartographic materials where one can go to find out if someone else has already scanned the map in question”. Russell Guy’s “The map dealer” also looks at the balance between paper and digital.

Of two of the main issues associated with creating and using digital data, one, ownership of copyright, has a useful treatment by Robert Barr, “Spatial data and intellectual property rights” with its somewhat gloomy conclusion: “map libraries will have to operate access and acquisition policies in an uncertain environment”. The second issue, the longevity and preservation of digital data, is hardly mentioned, with only two references in the index. Baruth touches on the problem in his contribution already noted above, in relation to digital copies from non‐digital originals, but the only explicit acknowledgement of the problems associated with retaining access to “born‐digital” data comes from the editors in their closing chapter “Is there a future for the map library?”. It should be emphasised that to gain maximum benefit from this volume it is essential that the user reads both the editors’ introduction where they try to categorise and set in context the papers that follow and this final chapter. Conducted in the form of a debate between the two, Parry and Perkins “try to argue from opposite standpoints, drawing freely on points made by other contributors”, and do it with force. This original way of trying to highlight the arguments of the preceding papers makes a lucid and stimulating conclusion to a valuable collection which should be read by all those concerned with the spatial dimensions of the earth sciences. There has been much recent gloom about the future of the map library (see for example the editorial in Geographical Journal, Vol. 165, 1999, pp. 253‐4 ). This volume will not necessarily dissipate that gloom but it will help those concerned to understand the issues.