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Subject: Are Paper Map Relevant?
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 13:29:42 -0500
From: Patrick McGlamery <[log in to unmask]>


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Of course paper maps are relevant... as storage of cartographic information.
But as Vishvalingum in 1987 said in my all-time favorite quote, "If
cartography is concerned with the making and use of maps, then it is not
just concerned with visual products: it is equally concerned with the
processes of mapping, from data collection, transformation and
simplification through to symbolism and with map reading, analysis and
interpretation.  These intellectual processes are expressed in terms of
prevailing technologies and computer-based Information Technology is fast
becoming the dominant technology of the day."

It's that last bit that is critical to us as librarians of maps.  The
prevailing technology is clearly "computer-based Information Technology" and
to me that does NOT mean "map librarians have been reduced to GIS
technicians for faculty and patrons." (who said that?)  It means that we had
better understand that just as wood cut was replaced by copper, and copper
was replaced by litho; computer-based Information Technology has replaced
litho... and paper.

That said, we have enormous stores of carto and geo-spatial information in
our collections, all cataloged, with scale, projection and coordinate scheme
clearly noted... right?  My challenge clearly is to effect the
transformation of those analog stores to digital stores.  And having done
that to describe them and provide access to them.

Maintaining passive, static, analog, uncataloged and unindexed information
stores is not cost effective, and when it comes time to cut... and it comes
periodically, those marginalized stores will be moth-balled and
administrations will look to solve the problem in other ways.

That was the message (at least the first part of this) of the CCISA Meeting
in 1993.  It's documented in Cartographic Perspectives for those who care to
look.

Another "pointer" is the 1999 NAS publication "Distributed Geolibraries".
It starts, "A distributed geolibrary is a vision for the future. It would
permit users to quickly and easily obtain all existing information available
about a place that is relevant to a defined need. It is modeled on the
operations of a traditional library, updated to a digital networked world,
and focused on something that has never been possible in the traditional
library: the supply of information in response to a geographically defined
need. It would integrate the resources of the Internet and the World Wide
Web into a simple mechanism for searching and retrieving information
relevant to a wide range of problems, including natural disasters,
emergencies, community planning, and environmental quality. A geolibrary is
a digital library filled with geoinformation--information associated with a
distinct area or footprint on the Earth's surface--and for which the primary
search mechanism is place. A geolibrary is distributed if its users,
services, metadata, and information assets can be integrated among many
distinct locations. <http://www.nap.edu/html/geolibraries/>

Patrick McGlamery