I cannot speak to weeding policies as we always retain at least one copy of an atlas. I will say, however, that our historic atlas collection has been heavily consulted by scholars, geographers, and cartographers in search of "unflattering" viewpoints. After all, whatever conclusions the researcher may make are their own... Ed Ed Redmond Reference Specialist Curator, Vault Collections Geography & Map Division Library of Congress 101 Independence Ave. SE, LM-B01 Washington, DC 20540-4650 Voice: 202-707-8548 [cid:image001.png@01D4E637.0AD814B0] From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Kathy Stroud Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 1:44 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Outdated/Culturally Insensitive Maps and Atlases All, Not sure if we've had a discussion about this before. However, it's coming up in my mind as I'm contemplating weeding our atlas collection. (At this point I'm mostly looking at duplicates, since all the old reference atlases from branch libraries seem to have been transferred to the main library.) Perhaps you could share any institutional guidance you have or merely your collective wisdom from over the years. We have a significant collection of 19th and 20th century atlases. Since we have a strong cartography component in our Geography department, I think it is important to keep these. On a personal level, I also think it's important as a cultural record of how our society previously viewed the world. However, some of the portrayals of the culture of non-Euro-American areas of the world are offensive to people. (I'm currently looking at a 1944 "Atlas of Global Geography." I had not realized that in 1944 bushman/hottentot was one of the races of mankind.) How do you treat older cartographic (and geography) materials that contain outdated, offensive viewpoints? 1) Transfer to a mediated access area (such as special collections) so the casual user does not stumble across it? 2) Keep in general, circulating shelves along with modern materials to hint that they should be taken in historical context? 3) Deaccession? 4) Ignore issue and hope no one else raises it? Working in an academic setting, I am for keeping at least a sampling of "objectionable" materials and against censoring what we consider embarrassing aspects of our history. How we talk about race has evolved significantly even in my lifetime, but if we don't understand our past, how can we understand where we are now and where we want to go? This issue with older atlases and other cartographic materials reminds me a lot of how geographers do and don't deal with "environmental determinism." In graduate school, there always seems to be an awkward discussion about environmental determinism when studying the history of geography. It's along the lines of ... er, we don't really believe this theory anymore, it was popular among geographers over 100 years ago, you should know about it so you understand how it influences modern geography, but we don't really talk about it because it's embarrassing. Any thoughts for a Friday? Kathy Stroud David and Nancy Petrone Map/GIS Librarian Knight Library 1299 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1299 541-346-3051 "A map is not just a picture-it's also the data behind the map, the methodology used to collect and parse that data, the people doing that work, the choices made in terms of visualization and the software used to make them."