-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        RE: Cataloging policy and practice for maps (etc.)
Date:   Sun, 18 May 2008 17:38:54 +0100
From:   Francis Herbert <[log in to unmask]>
To:     <[log in to unmask]>


Scott (and other Americans):

"Thomas Letts, one of the first professional map catalogers in the U.S.
would actually catalog each map still bound into atlases.  His initials
can be seen on maps in many of the old atlases at the AGS Library."

Digressing momentarily from the 'Book Brain' discussion.  Thomas Letts:
possibly the earliest known case of a cartographic cataloguing 'Brain
Drain' from UK to USA?!

Francis Herbert

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        RE: Cataloging policy and practice for maps extracted
from
atlases
Date:   Fri, 16 May 2008 14:26:59 -0500
From:   McEathron, Scott R <[log in to unmask]>
To:     <[log in to unmask]>

Harry,

It sounds like your cataloging administration is thinking of atlases as
books instead of an atlas as a convenient way of bundling together a
group of maps.  This is a common disease (call it "book brain") among
librarians not used to working with any format outside of the book or
journal.

Treatment for Book Brain is rarely successful.  Perhaps you could point
out that the contents of atlases where not always uniform. See:
"Amsterdam Atlas Production in the 1630s: A Bibliographer's Nightmare"
by Peter van der Krogt
Imago Mundi, Vol. 48, (1996), pp. 149-160.

Or, you could reason that the maps were generally an intellectually
discrete production.  Thomas Letts, one of the first professional map
catalogers in the U.S. would actually catalog each map still bound into
atlases.  His initials can be seen on maps in many of the old atlases at
the AGS Library.

Best wishes,

Scott McEathron