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Subject:        roll maps
Date:   Sun, 4 Dec 2005
From:   Brendan Richard Whyte <[log in to unmask]>
To:     Maps, Air Photo & Geospatial Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>




Hi Angie,
At Melbourne we had a cupboard of a couple of hundred wall maps retired
from teaching depts over the years. All uncatalogued. Last year we went
through them all, kept a selection covering Australia, its states and the
continents, and offeed the rest o students and staff in various depts
(geography, istory, classics, languages...). We had a pile of people
picking them over and all but half a dozen went to good homes. We even ha
a local high school come in, along with some of their students as labou to
carry them away!
We figure the information on most classroom wall maps is available in
easier to use formats like atlases and flat maps, so the wall maps were
too big and hard to store/handle/preserve. Though there re some beauies by
Justes Perthes covering recent Germany history that are wonderful to see
on a wall, especially the Nazi and Weimar periods.
 The 2-3 dozen maps we kept included some manuscript and special mounted
old Australian maps, and these are now all catalogued with a call number
preceded by 'roll map' so staff and students know what they are, and
where to find them. They are kept in a staff area, stored rolled on end
in a wheeled bin, all barcoded with a call number pencilled on one end of
the rolled material.
We occasionally get people wanting a wall map in particular, for use at a
conference or in a class, so sometimes lend them out (we're a nonlending
collection normally: nothing leaves the map area).
So those we've kept are for such use, or for retenio of examples of such
maps as historical artifacts in themselves.
Our really special/rare/fragile manuscript roll maps we gave the the
nationla nd stat libraries who can better store/preserve them and make
them accessible to a wider audience.

Brendan Whyte
ex-Uni Melbourne Asst Map Curator.





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