Map collection

A collection of maps is the storage site of cards, usually in a library, an archive, a museum, with cards publishers or authorities. Partial collections of maps, however, are united with graphic sheets, manuscripts and rare prints in a joint department; in this case is " Map Collection " to be understood as the totality of cartographic collection's holdings.

History

Cards are already known in medieval library inventories. Since the 15th century cards were collected, either at princely courts or naval academies in preparation for expeditions, whether for scholars of the Renaissance. New techniques such as engraving reduced manufacturing costs and helped the cards to further dissemination. Private collections of maps made ​​since the 17th century often the basis for public map collections. For example, the Royal Library in Munich received the collection of the Fugger and the British Museum that of King George II

In this context, the geographical societies are important, which received a great influence on the establishment and collection policy of public collections of maps or even docked collections. Thus founded Vincenzo Coronelli 1680 " Accademia degli Argonauti Cosmographica ", which existed until 1718. In Nuremberg was founded in 1740 " cosmographic society ," while a namesake association was founded in 1790 in Vienna to life. The Société de Géographie de Paris founded in 1821 was the first modern Geographic Society. Especially in the 19th century, many collections of maps were newly created or already existing cartographic materials be merged obtain specialized librarians in libraries under the responsibility.

Collection building, collection types

• In academic libraries, map collections usually have a existing portfolio of maps and atlases. Are often acquired new official topographic maps, thematic Single Cards, National Atlas and Thematic Regional Atlases. Then there is the cartographic literature generally.
• National libraries collect all the cards that affect their territory and be left as a deposit copies from publishers ( eg Helvetica ).
• General and regional libraries collect, depending on the orientation of tourist maps and city plans, possibly connected with travel guides.
• Maps publishers and producing cards authorities (for example, land surveying offices ) archive their own card production. However, these collections are partially closed to the public.
• Private collections are often thematically or regionally established, so that the collectors develop in their specific collection area rarely recognized experts and authors of Kartenbibliografien.

As a special case of a card collection, a collection of globes are considered.

Documentation

Newly published maps are listed as books in national bibliographies. So there are tracks called author (s), imprint and ISBN. Then there are the card-specific information, such as scale, map projection, geographic coordinates and map format. Most scientific map collections are now detected with at least the most important parts of collections in electronic catalogs and online can be consulted.

Older collections or private collections are often described in bibliophile catalogs. In it all, or at least representative pieces are shown. This is partly to ensure detection of the stock in the event of theft, on the other hand can be significantly reduced as the use of rare books, as is the mere illustration and scientific description of the cards for many cases and therefore the original card is protected.

Holdings in archives are often not single sheet having been exhausted, but detected only on the finding aids related to the files. The mostly untrained in cartographic issues Archives staff is cautious in describing the "foreign" regarded as unwieldy and in some ways as document type, so that for example the calculation and distortion of the map scale is usually omitted. These circumstances complicate the specific search for maps in archives, allow researchers stubborn but still some "discovery".

Challenges for the future

As with books in libraries also place cards collections increased emphasis on the detection of digital documents. These include maps and atlases on CD- ROM and DVD, and in part the provision of geodata. Such new forms of publication represent collections of maps was rather difficult, since not "only" texts and some embedded images should be kept, but very large amounts of data up to several gigabytes, which would possibly even require expert knowledge to service the geographic information systems. The long- term storage of cartographic data is unresolved, which is important especially for archives.

However, the digitization of analog cards stocks also offers the chance to library catalogs directly to the images (or at least the so-called thumbnails) to link. Also digitally processed sheet summaries for the detection of the leaf sections of atlases allow for a more focused research already from their own workstations.

Significant collections of maps

Germany

One of the largest map collections in Germany are those of the Berlin State Library, the Bavarian State Library in Munich and the Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen. Currently not available to the public is the collection of the publisher Justus Perthes in Gotha, which is owned by the Free State of Thuringia.

Austria

The undisputed largest collection of maps of the country is the one in the Austrian National Library in Vienna, which is connected the world's only public Globe Museum.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, the stocks are distributed to several libraries. The Map Collection of the ETH-Bibliothek Zurich is the largest and specializes in thematic maps. The Map Collection of the Zurich Central Library covers a large extent on the official topographic cartographies and the National atlases. In Bern there is a collection Ryhiner, a former private collection of Johann Friedrich von Ryhiner focusing 17th and 18th centuries.

Worldwide

The world's largest map collection is the Library of Congress in Washington, DC with approximately 4.8 million cards. Other very frequently used and cited collections are in the British Library in London and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The authoritative directory World directory of map collections (2000 ) identifies 714 map collections in 121 countries, with map collections in South America, Africa and South Asia compared to Europe and North America are few and little doped.