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From: "Scott R McEathron" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 9:53:28 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
Subject: FW: KU NEWS 1/15: Former librarian publishes e-book on maps found in 18th century geography books
Colleagues,
FYI
--Scott R. McEathron
KU Libraries
Today's News from the University of Kansas
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FROM THE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY RELATIONS | http://www.ur.ku.edu
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Contact: Rebecca Smith, KU Libraries, (785) 864-1761, [log in to unmask]
Former librarian publishes e-book on maps found in 18th century
geography books
http://www.news.ku.edu/2010/january/15/mccorkle.shtml
LAWRENCE - Barbara McCorkle's "Cartobibliography of the Maps in 18th
Century British and American Geography Books" has been published as an
e-book in KU ScholarWorks, the open-access digital repository at the
University of Kansas.
McCorkle was an associate librarian at KU from 1968 to 1974.
"Cartobibliography" contains 470 entries about geography books and 6,700
entries for individual maps within those books. The book is online at
http://hdl.handle.net/1808/5564.
"Something like this is a tremendous aid to finding the maps in the
books," said Karen Cook, interim special collections librarian at
Spencer Research Library.
McCorkle's 30-year project took her to libraries all over the United
States and the United Kingdom, poring over English geography books from
the 18th century and compiling details of every map on every page. The
attention to detail took time.
"This was the one project that was always there," McCorkle said. "Early
on, the Special Libraries Association gave me a grant to do some work,
but it was something I had to fit in to whatever else I was doing."
The project is significant to researchers because "although many of
these books are digitized and online, finding aids are not set up to
help scholars find specific maps," McCorkle said. "Also, not everybody
has access to those databases."
Accessibility to researchers was a major factor for McCorkle in deciding
where her book would be published.
"I chose KU ScholarWorks because I thought it would reach more people,"
she said.
McCorkle donated the research materials she gathered over the course of
the project to the Spencer Research Library, including photocopies of
the maps she wrote about and printouts of the English Short Title
Catalogue record for every item in her book. McCorkle donated several
18th century geography books in 2006.
Cook said the combination of print materials and the electronically
published work is invaluable for researchers.
"For the type of research that people need to do with old maps, they
really need to work with the originals," Cook said. "There's only so
much you can do with the digital images."
After working at KU, McCorkle spent time at Purdue University and Yale
University, finishing her career as map curator at Yale. She returned to
Lawrence after retiring.
In her tenure at KU, McCorkle helped expand KU Libraries' collection of
geography books.
"We have extensive holdings, thanks to Barbara," Cook said. "The
collections at Spencer inspired the book, so it's really coming home in
a way."
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