Hi Amy,

Welcome to the wide world of maps!!

I would imagine that you are not the regional depository for government maps.  In that case, you can keep what you want, but would need to offer your maps.

Many in this group have weeded their topographic maps.  Many have opted to only keep regionally important maps like of their state and withdraw the others.  All topo maps can be found online, with most revisions, so you can still help people find older maps.

The current paper maps that you have are not the most current available and are probably at least 10 years old if not older by this point.

At Penn State, most of our topo questions are about Pennsylvania, with very rare exceptions.  We have to keep ours as we have a housing agreement with our state regional library.  You can always interlibrary loan a physical copy if needed.

I don't envy you your move to offsite.  I would make sure that you catalog records are in good shape for the ones you send or have some meaningful discovery system if you can't catalog them all.  You could catalog them by folder with good descriptions.

Good luck and don't hesitate to reach out to the group if you have any questions.

Heather Ross
Map Specialist
Penn State

From: Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Amy Koshoffer <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2024 4:03 PM
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Subject: Photorevised 7.5 topos maps
 
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Hello All -

I have recently become the liaison for several departments and am taking care of our print map collection as part of my duties. I am a complete novice here.  We are planning to move most of the collection to an off-campus site.  This is an opportunity to weed, and I wondered if folks keep copies of photorevised maps.  I was thinking to just keep the most recent.  Is there a reason to keep the older ones?

A colleague suggested this new ebook from Janet Reyes at UC Riverside: Conducting a Map Collection Review: A Workbook to Help You on the Journey as general resource.  Will be ordering soon.

Cheers,
Amy Koshoffer
U of Cincinnati