Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeénnes de Recherche, Groupe des Cartothécaires de LIBER
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Swedish National Bibliography: maps, plans and problems
Göran Bäärnhielm, Royal Library, Stockholm
© LIBER and author
Published from: Bulletin Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeénnes de Recherche, 28(1986)
There has been no comprehensive listing of Swedish sheet maps since 1973. Until then the Institute of Geography at Lund University made au annual list for the Swedish Yearbook of Geography, and also contributed to the Bibliographie Cartographique Internationale, but the value of this list was not considered by the Institute equal to the effort spent in compiling it. The Parliament Library has included maps in its annual bibliography of government publications, but this will not be the case in the future. The Royal Library has not done any sheet map cataloguing for the last 40 years, mainly due to lack of personnel, whereas the other Nordic countries have had map bibliographies for several years.
A committee of the Bibliographic Department of the Royal Library has put forward a proposal to include sheet maps in the National Bibliography in a separate list. This would raise its standard, but at the same time production costs would have to be cut by excluding or simplifying other material. The Map Department has agreed to this subject to certain limits, but the project is still in the planning and experimental stage.
Two ( or rather three) of the conditions are already fulfilled: cataloguing rules, a database, and some additional space for the handling of the maps. The Swedish Library Information System (LIBRIS) is managed by the Royal Library and is used for registration by some 20 and for searching by some 150 research libraries. Since 1976 it has been used to produce the National Bibliography. It is mainly intended for shared cataloguing and the location of titles as a help for acquisitions departments, but it is also accessible to the public, although the possibilities of subject searching are limited. Registration is done in a modified MARC format, which has now been adapted for map cataloguing by adding a field for mathematical data. A Swedish translation of the AACR2 rules, including cartographic materials, has been adopted and will be put into use at the end of 1985.
Total Swedish map production is estimated at about 40,000 items per year. About 10,000 maps (these figures probably include maps in hooks and periodicals) are submitted to the National Land Survey Agency for security control before publication. The Royal Library receives only 1,500-2,000 sheet maps on legal deposit, and so the Land Survey, as is proper, has the best check on map production. They do not, however, catalogue maps not produced by them, and if a proposal is accepted to delegate the security control to producers, then the possibility of a general check will be lost.
The legal deposit deliveries are by no means complete. A good number of maps are produced by cities and local communities and are printed by small firms with no tradition of map deposit. We will therefore have to build up an information network, a difficult task in the face of the increasing diversity of map production.
The selection of items to be included is no great problem. Our enquiry to libraries, map producers and users has given a good picture of what is considered important, that is, the list should contain maps for public use and of more than ephemeral interest, and also atlases, which are now in the general bibliography. Maps in books and journals are not being considered at present.
Personnel resources might be the great problem. It is assumed that no extra personnel will be available for this project, so that the extra hours put into it must be seen as an investment leading to future returns in the form of easier map retrieval for the public, which is also one of our duties. We could, after some training, put one half-time cataloguer on the registration, which should cope with 500 sheets/year. But for the majority of maps we must rely on assistance from other agencies, mainly the National Land Survey, for the cataloguing of their own products. For large series a short enumeration of new sheets and a reference to a separately published complete list would be enough.
As we have no geographer in the library, it will be necessary, for the proper editing of the map list, to cooperate also with geographic institutions or with the Swedish Cartographic Society.
As regards cataloguing problems proper, there is the uncertainty of authorship and date of some maps, but mainly the conflict of headings, as most map users prefer area entry, while the AACR2 gives authors and titles. This we will have to solve by entering area as a subject heading and editing the bibliography according to these. There must also be an authority file of geographic names. The maps are additionally classified according to the Swedish library subject classification system (an alphanumerical system used mainly by public libraries) which also includes rules for geographic regions and names, and we also add a few thematic subject headings. Coordinates were not at first considered, but we could reconsider them at a later stage.
In conclusion, we will shortly begin testing the registration, which at first will be in the modest form of an accessions list for the Royal Library Map Department. Once the different forms of cooperation are effected and the coverage of map production is considered sufficient, it will be reshaped into a National Bibliography of Swedish maps.
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