Hello Brendan, Nice work! For the copyright info in your catalog record, all historic USGS topos (prior to 2009) are in the public domain: https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-usgs-topographic-maps-copyrighted We're in the midst of inventorying our USGS topos as well. Our collection was open and unsupervised for a long time, and since my arrival we've put an end to that. We're curating the collection again, and I'm trying to assess it's completeness and condition. At the bottom of the USGS Topo Viewer page is a link to CSV files that contain records for every map that was included in their online collection, which contain metadata that drives their website: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/ We've used that list as the basis for a database, and we built a Python program that we use for doing the inventory, matching maps we have in hand to a database record: https://github.com/Brown-University-Library/geodata_map_inventory It's gone fairly well, but it's a complex workflow given the sheer variety of maps, and we've had to make adjustments along the way: specifically dealing with issues related to changes in the name of quads, the designation of the primary state, and errors with how map or print years were recorded. We're tracking the anomalies in a spreadsheet and will reconcile them later (and will send our info to the USGS). We're also finding instances where we own maps that the USGS does not have in their TopoViewer (which we'll eventually scan). We've finished inventorying the 250k, 100k, and 25k metric series, and are slowly moving through the USGS 24k / AMS 25k (not included in the USGS CSV) / and other scales that predated 24k. The metadata CSV records contain the unique IDs of the quads, so eventually we were going to join our records to quad shapefiles using those IDs to create some kind of interactive map, where you can click on a cell and get a list of maps we have for that quad. The metadata also contains links to digital versions in the TopoView. We are not going to catalog individual sheets as there are simply too many, and they have a logical organizational scheme (organized by scale / state / quad name / year). We will probably create one catalog record per series (by scale), with a link to our index map. Whether you choose to catalog them all or just maintain lists or indexes, I'd recommend using their metadata files as that will save you time. Best - Frank On Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 7:04 AM Brendan Whyte <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi all, > > After years of procrastination, I have begun indexing our US 24k series > (very incomplete... we stopped collecting these when an exchange programme > with USGS ceased 20-30 years ago) > I have made an overall US map showing which states have been properly > indexed to date, and attached this to our catalogue record > https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/6855508, along with coloured-in > indexes of each of the 19 smallest states. > > The plan is to work my way through the remaining 30 states in 2024.... > wish me luck! > > Please let me have any feedback on what I have done so far. > (once you've opened the US index, click 'browse this collection' in the > breadcrumbs to see the individual state indexes) > > What have others done in the way of online indexes for the series? > We have never even considered cataloguing the sheets individually... but > I guess we could have done individual records (and indexes) for each state > set, and linked them with an overall parent series record similar to our > existing record... but that's nevertheless more work for the cataloguers. > > Compliments and criticism most welcome before I embark any deeper into > this project... > > Merry Christmas! > > Brendan Whyte > National Library of Australia > > > > > > > > > -- Frank Donnelly (he/him/his) Head of GIS & Data Services | Brown University Library [log in to unmask] https://libguides.brown.edu/geodata | https://atcoordinates.info/ [log in to unmask] (group email for social science librarians)