----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Thanks, Pat, for your comments. I am enjoying the give and take on this, except for the flaming and the sarcasm. Lighten up folks! I have printed out all this discussion so far, except what came up this a.m., and I plan to sit down and mull over it on my 3 hour weekend, Sunday afternoon...A glass of Jack should help make all things clear, don't you think? Once again, MAPS-L, & MapHist, have come through, and the wired community has added immensely to my own understanding of the issues we are each struggling with locally. My preference is to wallow in the Blaeus and Sanborns. Yes, the hard copy, the paper copy, the original stuff. Horrifying, I know. But, still, even at my age, I am caught by the potential of the new technologies, and how they can help make images of those Blaeus and Sanborns accessible, beyond the walls of the library. A danger here, is an assumption, that these digital images will be an acceptible substitute for the originals. A digitized image will never substitute for the look, feel, smell, sound [as you turn the pages, and crack the vellum, opening the damn things] the aura, of the original. That aura, to me, is what reaches back through time to the creator and first users of these atlases when they were new. When they were new technology. The way the atlas is stitched together, the order of the plates, the varying color schemes from one printing to the next, etc., etc., -- for me these are all tangibles lost on disc. And they are all clues to the people who created these atlases, and the rationale behind the atlases, etc. [How is a digitized Sanborn ever going to make clear the gritty reality of those "pasties?" and the reality they cover up?] Financially and spatially strapped administrators, may well see digitizing entire collections, and thus reducing them to a shoebox, or better yet, vapor, [downsizing to the max] as a solution to space and economic issues [read staff costs]. Over and over in discussions on digitizing, the lauded access beyond the doors of the museum or library is raised as the answer to our prayers. The flip side, is a message that the originals really arent that valuable, and can be put in storage. The flip side to "hey, these are accessible to the guy in the street in Podunk," is the assumption that then the curator or the librarian is not needed as an intermediary, and more importantly as a bridge to related information and collections. Of course, all the guys and gals in Podunk have computers and access to the Web. [Hah.] What is the expression?? "the map is not the land. Well, the digit is not the map." Digitizing is great, as an enhancement, not as a substitute. Maps from library and museum collections, digitized and placed on the web will enhance their home collections, will serve as "advertisements" for those collections, and invitations to distant readers to use these collections, even when it means travel to remote places [like Manhattan]. Oh well, I am sure I have stepped in it now, having opened the barn door..., but, even if messy, this is all sure fun! ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: Re[2]: Digitizing Maps Author: Patrick McGlamery <[log in to unmask]> at Internet Date: 7/14/95 8:48 AM ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The horse is out of the barn Alice. I loved Tom Neff's statement, "A whole CD-ROM or optical disk is no more valuable than the original map whose image it carries." This really gets to the nub of scanning cartographic treasures. I mean, compare the Red Hot Chili Peppers latest release for $14.95 and a really good scan of a Jefferson and Frye. Why are we quibbling about file size? Alice, I know this hasn't gotten to your much more significant question of WHAT to scan. Is it a question of putting together an exhibit, or a collection development policy? Personally I'd rather see excellent scanned images of maps, which meet all the technical controls, as part of multi-media publications than simply as maps. Puts a whole scholarly twist to it, but I, for one, am ready to be the scholar/librarian for a change. Patrick McGlamery