----------------------------Original message---------------------------- 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 The mapsheets once received monthly in hard copy have been superceded by digitized data within the issuing Depts and costs money to access and out little collection sits forlornly in a corner, a frozen monument to the state of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.