Nick: In 1988 I presented a paper at NACIS titled "Status of World Mapping that can be acquired for Map Collections." In the paper, never published, I tried to cover the major trends in map production. The paper resulted from some planning activities I was undertaking. I developed a database that gave the number and types of maps that would be available to Map Collections over the next ten years. I developed the database from the literature that was then available to map librarians. The following are my figures from 1988. Current World Production of Sheet Maps Available to Map Collections Published Unpublished World..............2,400..........2,000 North America....121,800.........43,900 South America.....22,600.........36,000 Europe............86,300.........25,300 Asia..............27,400.........35,900 Africa............30,100.........20,800 Oceans............16,600..........3,300 Total............307,200........167,200 The unpublished maps are those that I could identify as being planned for future production or those I estimated should be produced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- World Production of Map Sheets Current Planned Available maps.....300,000......160,000 1:10,000 series....100,000.......50,000? Security series....165,000.......80,000? Military series....300,000.......50,000? Total..............865,000......340,000? Yearly Map Sheet Production Topos..............27,000 Geology.............5,000 Thematic...........13,000 1:10,000 series....10,000 Security...........15,000? Military...........30,000? Total.............100,000? The security and military catagories were for those maps that were not available to Map Collections because of security restrictions or because they were military series. Many of those series have since been made available. -------------------------------------------------------------------- All this may be of some use. If you need more of the data, and I did the study at the country level, let me know. Johnnie D. Sutherland Curator of Maps University of Georgia Libraries [log in to unmask]