Here are the minutes of the Map Curators Group Annual Business Meeting held
on
Friday 8 September 2000. It can be found on page 15 of Cartographiti 62.
Please send me any suggestions for agenda items for the next meeting on
Thursday 13 September at the University of Liverpool.
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The group met briefly on Thursday where people who were not attending the
Friday meeting were asked to raise matters of concern. The only point not
covered elsewhere was the proposed BCS conference in Belfast in 2002. Some
did not like the idea, but others were keen.
1) Apologies
Apologies were received from April Carlucci, Richard Oliver, Francis
Herbert, Wendy Cawthorne, Jane Wickenden, Diana Webster, Paul Fergusson,
Robert Davies and John Moore.
2) MARC21/UKMARC
The British Library Collection Management department was consulting on
issues of UKMARC/MARC21 harmonisation. Ann Sutherland (as Convener of the
Map Curators' Group) had received a questionnaire as part of the process
and had appealed for views via lis-maps on 27 Jul 2000. This e-mail can be
seen in the lis-maps archive:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0007&L=lis-maps&F=&S=&P=2598
A Map Curators' response was discussed. It was concluded that most people
are moving to MARC21. The RSLP projects have to produce output in MARC21
plus conversion software. CURL is still in UKMARC. Paula Williams kindly
offered to respond to the survey on behalf of the MCG, through individual
institutions were still free, indeed encouraged, to respond on their own
behalf.
3) What can we do to help each other?
The LIBER website and its useful links were noted:
http://www.kb.nl/infolev/liber/intro.htm
Similarly the Western Association of Map Libraries' Map Librarian's Toolbox:
http://www.waml.org/maptools.html
It was wondered whether something along these lines could be developed for
the UK.
Displays for the Map Library.
It was suggested that Map Curators who created temporary displays that
might be useful to others could make the text available to colleagues via a
file on the web. Such a file would include suggestions of maps that
illustrate the display. Examples of possible display themes include:
Projections (Bob Parry noted that he might have some material that could be
used); Scales; suggestions for Map of the Month or Maps in the News could
also be shared via lis-maps.
4) Training
There was to be a day entitled Preservation of Maps and Plans given by the
Society of Archivists on 12 December 2000. There had been a request for
training with the use of digital data from Wendy Cawthorne. There had been
an offer from SCONUL to help with the organisation of a training event.
Nick Millea was delegated to contact them.
5) Outreach
Alan Magnus-Bennett of University College Worcester noted that though he
had been a member of SoC for many years he had only heard of the MCG the
previous day. It was decided that the SoC newsletter should be approached
to include a piece on the MCG. The LA Record was also thought to be a good
place to advertise ourselves though it was stressed that any piece should
be general (ie Do you work with maps? or Do you have to help people with
maps?). Paula Williams noted that we must not direct ourselves to Map
Libraries, but to people who have, amongst other things, map collections in
their care.
Tinho da Cruz reported on that he had publicised the MCG in both the
Society of Archivists Newsletter and their e-mail discussion group
archives-nra.
6) Cartographiti
Suggestions for items for Cartographiti included:
Rice Mapping competition (Intrigued? See a forthcoming issue!);
Funny Questions that map curators get asked;
Examples of bad mapping from newspapers;
And finally, a gossip page: to include Hallos from new people in the field.
7) lis-maps
People were encouraged to use it. Remember to reply to the list rather
than individuals. Tinho noted that more than one list owner was allowed
and suggested that another be taken on.
The official monitoring of other lists was recommended. Andrew Cook
offered to monitor Carta, volunteers would be sought for Maps-l and
maphist.
8) Any other business
Peter Jones announced the previous day that the DGC intended to market
MODMAP2. Tony Campbell noted that it would be very interesting to see how
this progressed.
Frank Blakeway (the BCS administrator) has added the Special Collections to
the Directory of UK Map Collections website:
http://www.cartography.org.uk/Pages/Publicat/Ukdir/UKindex.html
Revision of AACR2 was still underway. April and Francis' work on this was
noted.
Huw Thomas noted that if the Heritage Lottery Fund bid at the Royal
Geographic Society were successful it would be closed at some point.
A possible outing to see the Large Worcester parish map (mentioned recently
on lis-maps) was considered. Tinho da Cruz was delegated to investigate it.
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