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Hello,
        I read your enquiry with some interest as I used to catalogue
the maps in our University ( then a College of Advanced Education
Library). I would recommend cataloging maps to the fullest extent
available as the original decision here was to catalog titles (
individual maps or series using the Dewey area code as the first
element in the call number. A Cutter number was added based on the
issuing body. A call No. prefix indicated whether the item(s) were
MAP and suspended on open Multifiles or MAP(S) and on the map shelves
used for supporting materials with maps folded within, aerial
photographs etc. A typical call no is MAP 943 Q4501 for Qld 1,100,000
Cadastral Series from the (then) Queensland Dept of Mapping and
Surveying. The catalog records were created using the AUSMARC
monograph fromat despite the fact that a cartographic format was
available at the time and without the use of the Boggs and Lewis
codes for details of the types of map etc. Needless to say, the MAP
collection remained a Cinderella within the Library that nobody has
been able to access in any meaningful way via the library Catalogue.
The usual strategy of die-hard map users is to go to the map area and
browse or consult the associated Index atlases, an inhouse tool based
on the publishers' catalogues of map publishers. These records appear
to have been "bumped" by higher quality records on the move to the
Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) in 1982 and my association
with the maps had ceased by 1985. Recently it has come back to me
after the intervening years as an add-on to the duties of a variety
of professional or para-professionals over the years. In the
meantime, the inexorable march of technological advancement has left
the collection behind. The mapsheets once received monthly in hard
copy have been superceded by digitized data within the issuing Depts
and costs money to access and out little collection sits forlornly in
a corner, a frozen monument to the state of mapping in QLD in the Mid-
80's. No commitment has been made, or even contemplated, to the idea
of employing a specialist professional to develop and maintain the
collection and its future is at best uncertain. The urban and
regional planning, Geology, Surveying, Cartography etc go elsewhere
for the majority of maps they need.