----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hi Maps-L folks. Could I tap a few minds about the best way to handle the indexing of US topos at 1:24,000 and 1:25,000? The indexes to these maps are very well done, but they do present us with some difficulties. We believe that the best way to access our collection of US topos is through the indexes folded up as green coloured booklets. Because we file our maps upright in vertical map filing cabinets, we don't keep the indexes with the maps. The indexes are kept in a Princeton box on a book shelf not too far away from the maps. The maps are filed alphabetically by state and, within each state, are filed alphabetically by sheet name. Our problem lies with the fact that some sheets (for some states) are 1:24,000 and other sheets are 1:25,000; for cataloguing reasons we file the all the 1:24,000s for a particular state first; immediately behind these are the 1:25,000s for that same state. But the printed indexes do not distinguish between the two different scales (sidebar: I find that curious!). We don't want our patrons to have the search in two different places in our collection to find a particular sheet--e.g., looking for Troy, New York in the 1:24,000 section and for Troy, New York in the 1:25,000 section. We experimented with annotating the indexes to indicate those sheets that are at 1:25,000 (since there are fewer of these than of the larger scale) but the indexes are very "busy" and this information is hard to read. We also tried using different coloured inks/magic marker/grease pencil to indicate scale. But this presents a problem for us since we keep only the most recent sheet; that is, if our 1:24,000 topo is superseded by a more recent 1:25,000, then we withdraw the earlier 1:24,000. This means that we then have to un-highlight the sheet on the index. Does anyone out there have a similiar filing situation and, if so, how have you tackled the problem of indicating your holdings? Cheers, ============================================================================= Richard Hugh Pinnell Head, University Map and Design Library, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 Phone: 519/888-4567, extension 3412 Fax: 519/746-8476 Email: [log in to unmask] =============================================================================