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Dear All,
 
It is a while since I was last able to update you, but herewith some
of the latest development:
 
HarperCollins Cartographic now has two operating components, which
cover conventional publishing under the Times Books and Collins brands
and everything else under the Bartholomew Mapping Services brand.
 
This means that almost all our paper products will gradually lose their
Bartholomew and Nicholson branding and reappear under either Times or Collins
as the publishers see fit. While I think it is very sad to see the loss
of the Bartholomew name on these maps, I would have to admit that it
had all got rather confusing and no-one was quite sure whether we were
Times, Nicholson, Collins or Bartholomew. Hopefully haveing most things
appear in a similar Collins style will lead to greater impact on the
bookshop shelves.
 
Bartholomew Mapping Services is now a service provider both internally
to the Publishers and externally to co-edition and contract customers.
For example, although our paper products may appear as Collins titles,
they should contain a note to the effect that the maps have been
created by Bartholomew Mapping Services (assuming that the Publishers
source the maps from us). This restores exactly the situation that
used to prevail between Times Books and Bartholomew before the two
companies merged ten years ago. Bartholomew Mapping Services will also
deal with all new technology ventures, and so will continue to sell
Bartholomew Digital Map Data, administer a Web site, provide services
to Internet customers, and so forth.
 
Bartholomew Digital Data has recently announced a variety of new and
improved products:
 
1 Great Britain 1:200 000 scale data
 
At the moment the existing 1:250 000 data set is being completely over-
hauled in Canada using Landsat images to ensure that all features are
reregistered to lie within +/- 150m of their WGS84 (GPS) locations. This
should remove once and for all the historical problem we have had of a
poor fit between this data set and the products from a major UK
competitor. In fact ours will be the only data set at this scale to
have nee
 
n registered in the GPS datum rather than OS GB 1936. The
data will, though, continue to be provided in the National Grid
projection. To mark the substantial improvement in the postional
accuracy of the data it is being relaunched at the slightly larger
scale of 1:200 000. Work should be complete in January 1998.
 
2 Version 2 of the Bartholomew World Gazetteer
 
This is now available with the number of entries increased to
257 000, and with new information on population and heights
of mountains. The accuracy of Lat/Long postions is much
improved and all entries have been regenerated from our GIS rather
than the Times Comprehensive Atlas.
 
3 The Greater London Street Atlas on CD
 
The well known title will be available on CD in a couple of weeks.
The product also contains a database of London Places (hotels, shops,
etc), and a full set of tools for creating your own databases and
graphic overlays.
 
4 Version 1.1 of GB Maps on CD-ROM
 
The next version of this popular product (updating all the
vector layers - for example 1997 local authority boundaries)
is available within the next week or two.
 
The Bartholomew Web Site (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/maps)
continues to develop. I have just placed FREE samples on our
London, Great Britain and Europe datasets onto the site. These
are in ArcView and MapInfo format. GB and London also include
TIFF raster images. I don't know what is good and what is bad, but
we are now getting about 300 visitors per week (anyone want to
comment?). We also now have a technical support section, so in
future I will place the answers to common questions here.
 
That is about all for the moment, except to say that 1996/97
was our best year yet for Data Products, and things seem to be
coming together nicely on the Publishing side - all this after
a few very difficult years for Map Companies (witness the recent
sale of RandMcNally and so on).
 
regards, and thank you for your time,
 
Tim Rideout
Bartholomew Mapping Services