Hello All,

Paige - I'm impressed that you remember my OSS map project!

LSU has about 575 OSS maps - just found another one last month.  The ones smaller than 11 x 17 inches have been scanned on a flatbed scanner.  Those larger than that were photographed with a large format architectural camera.  Now that we have a 24 x 36 inch flatbed scanner I may go back and scan the maps that will fit on it.    In addition, I have over 3400 black & white and color photocopies copies and 12,537 digital photographs of OSS maps from the Library Congress and the National Archives flat map files plus a few from the NARA text file boxes.  I believe I have an image of all but a handful of the OSS maps in the NARA Cartographic and Architectural Section at College Park.  Further, I have identified OSS maps used in general publications and OSS R&A reports on microfilm.  Finally, I have converted the OSS map Request Record (a sequential list of the maps as they were requested) that is used as a finding aid for requesting the maps into a Access Database with 6306 entries.

This research is for a book that will be a descriptive catalog of OSS maps (I still need catchy title) that will aid researchers to better locate and use the maps.  Unfortunately, hurricanes, ongoing state budget crises and life have overtaken work on the book.  Things settled down last year and I finally finished organizing the digital photographs so I hope to resume work on the book soon.

Bottom line:  If you have a question about OSS maps, please feel free to contact me.


John

John M. Anderson
Map Librarian and Director
Cartographic Information Center
Department of Geography & Anthropology
LSU
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
(225) 578-6247

From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paige G. Andrew
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2016 7:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OSS maps - scanned?

The map collection I know of that has a substantial collection of OSS maps is at LSU, under John Anderson. I don't know if he has scanned any of them though Michael. We have quite a few OSS maps and a lot of GSGS stuff here at Penn State but none are scanned even though they are all cataloged.

Paige
________________________________
From: "Michael M Noga" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2016 2:30:41 PM
Subject: OSS maps - scanned?

Greetings,

I have been sorting through our map collection and found a number of the 1940s maps from the OSS  (Office of Strategic Services) and GSGS (Geographical Section, General Staff).  There are a few small city plans of small towns, topo maps, administrative maps, population, and economic geography maps.

Some libraries have cataloged their print copies, but I wondered whether they were available online.  The Hathi Trust links that I found didn't work.

I am surprised that I haven't been able to find evidence that anyone has scanned these maps.  Am I missing something?

Michael

_________
Michael Mark Noga
Collections Strategist
Earth and Planetary Sciences Librarian
Mathematics Librarian
MIT Libraries
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617.253.1290