Ed Redmond, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (LC), “Digital Maps and Digital Map Reference.”
LC has been around since 1800, and has been collecting maps for the entire time. Over 5 million map sheets dating from 1830 to the present! That’s a lot of maps. In fact, more than anyone else in the world.
1995 – they decided to digitally scan historical maps. What do they scan: American Memory stuff; documents for the Congressional Relations Office; documents for the general public. Scanning goals: research quality images (not perfect reproductions); controlled access; persistent URLs. Priorities: cartobibliographies, out-of-copyright stuff (pre-1923); items with existing catalog records. They also scan atlases.
Their scanner is HUGE, and is called JumboScanner. Can do maps 3×5 feet in one pass. It takes 15-30 minutes per map. Scans are saved as TIFF and converted into JPEG2000. Like most projects I’ve seen at this institute, theirs seems to be [almost] entirely Windows-based.
Other benefits to scanning (besides preservation and public access): LC has in the past supported international mediation of geographically based conflicts (?). They don’t do that anymore, but they do have the resources to make maps for various Congressional divisions on demand. Confidentiality issues are involved with those kinds of maps, so they can’t put them into the catalogue without the requester’s consent.
The LC Map Collections website now features more than 10,000 cartographic items. The American Memory site also has an LC Learning Page, created especially for teachers. Collection Connections marries digital content with education standards, offering among other things sample lesson plans. They even do video conferences featuring maps, where LC specialists talk to classes via video.
Ed proceeded to show us a bunch of fascinating historical maps. Check out the website, it’s awesomely outrageous.