General News
UW-Madison's Robinson Map Library Partners with U.S. Geological Survey in Digital Preservation Project
It has been a busy fall semester in the Robinson Map Library.
The USGS topographic map scanning project is underway, and as of early September, all 7.5 minute and 15 minute maps for Wisconsin have been scanned (see longer article on this project). USGS has recently started to scan all the topographic maps the Map Library holds for the state of Minnesota. Discussions on how to serve the Wisconsin map imagery to the UW campus community are currently taking place.
Jaime Martindale (Map and GIS Librarian) presented
the digital preservation project with Greg Allord at the North American
Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) annual conference in October
in Salt Lake City, UT. In the time following the presentation there has
been an extreme amount of positive feedback, and many universities with
similar digital preservation efforts already underway have been showing
interest in potential collaborations.
In August, the Map Library received an aerial photograph collection donation totaling over 25,000 individual photographs from the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. This collection consists of USGS quad-based photography dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. It will greatly enhance the coverage (both geographical and temporal) of the Map Library's existing aerial photograph collection.
The Library has also accepted another aerial photograph collection totaling almost 20,000 photos from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. This photography is due to arrive in early spring and consists of statewide coverage for the years 1991-1994. These photos are black and white infrared images, taken by the DNR Division of Forestry. With the addition of these new collections, the Map Library's historic aerial photography collection now totals nearly 250,000 photographs.
Map Library staff continue to
work on cataloging the many maps that make up our expansive "cataloging
backlog". We have added over 250 maps to
the collection over the summer and fall months, and patrons can now find
many of the library's collection materials within MadCat.
Other new additions to the Map Library include the installation of Adobe Illustrator on the public access computers, and the upgrade of ArcGIS from version 8.3 to 9.1. The Library has also received two free licenses for Google Earth Pro, courtesy of the "Google Earth Education Initiative", which provides free educational licenses to schools and universities.
One final addition to the Map Library that you may have noticed if you've visited recently, are two large Norfolk Pine trees. These beautiful trees were donated to the Map Library by Ray and Star Olderman of Madison. Please do stop by and see what a wonderful addition to the library these trees make.
Find out more about the Robinson Map Library at http://www.geography.wisc.edu/maplib/ .
