In Defense of the Map Library

Abstract

In recent years, the value of print map collections around the world has come into question resulting in the closure and consolidation of many map libraries and their collections (Keller 2001; Andrew and Weimer 2016). The justification for these closures is often that “print maps are no longer relevant in a digital world.” In this editorial, we (Marcy and Nathan) take this opportunity to introduce ourselves to the readership of the Taylor & Francis Journal of Map & Geography Libraries (hereafter “JMGL”), by outlining four major ways we feel that map libraries and the print cartographic collections that they preserve remain relevant and irreplaceable even in a digital world. There are likely other ways that map libraries and their collections remain relevant today and we invite you, the authors and readers of this journal, to contribute your own ideas and writing on the topic in future issues. In our view, there is a dearth of formal writing and scholarship in response to map library closures and if not in this journal, then where would one look for sound reasoning and justification to keep them open? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a map as a “drawing or other representation of the earth’s surface or a part of it made on a flat surface, showing the distribution of physical or geographic features (and often also including socio-economic, political, agricultural, meteorological, etc. information), with each point in the representation corresponding to an actual geographical position according to a fixed scale or projection; a similar representation of the positions of the stars in the sky, the surface of the planet, or the like.” For the purposes of this editorial, we refer to “maps” generically to also include the other print cartographic resources often housed in map libraries like atlases, globes, historic aerial photographs, and others. Print maps (and other print cartographic resources) are often the authoritative geographic and scientific documents of their time, accurately