BRICMICS, the umbrella group for British map librarians, curators and archivists, has had this item on its standing agenda at its twice-yearly meetings over the past few years and has tried to keep track of what is happening.   When alerted (sometimes by moles), we have done what we could to keep collections open or to salvage them where this failed.  Examples of the latter include the former SOAS map library and the former map collection of LCC boroughs that had been housed (and more recently neglected) at West Hill branch library in the London Borough of Wandsworth.  The most significant parts of these collections have now been incorporated in the collections of the British Library. I believe that similar stories can be told in Scotland.   The problem has always been the lack of notice: where there is no longer a map librarian, there is no longer someone who would think of notifying a map librarian represented on BRICMICS or the BCS.   And there are always the managers who view map cabinets as unnecessary encumbrances  to the re-sue of the space for fund-raising activities and who want to act ‘decisively’ so as to circumvent any opposition.

BRICMICS can’t be expected to act in cases which it isn’t informed of, but it does have (collective) experience of what needs to be done, can write letters or emails on behalf of the map community to the people who count  and, as I hope the above shows, can even do something in worst case scenarios.

So please let me or Kimberly Kowal – or anyone else who is represented on BRICMICS – know  if you hear about threatened map library closures.

Peter