Ligue des Bibliothèques Europeènnes de Recherche, Groupe des Cartothécaires de LIBER

National progress report of Sweden 2000-2002

Map Curator's Group
A Map Curator's Group, Kartarkivarieföreningen, affiliated to the Swedish Cartographic Society, was founded. This took place at the annual meeting of the Swedish Cartographic Society at Jönköping, April 17, 2002. There were 9 people present. Membership is intended for librarians and archivists, with the aim of defining map curatorship as a profession and to organise education. The rules of the Society, however, prevent any restrictions to membership, so anybody interested has the right to join. This makes the group's status as a professional body and partner to negotiations somewhat uncertain. The group has no independent finance, membership fees go to the Society, so the definition of membership is also somewhat vague. A parallel would be the precarious identity of the cartographic profession itself, which has caused some concern among its members in recent years.

Cataloguing
The Royal Library Manuscript Map Catalogue project has continued at a rather slow speed. The intention is to make LIBRIS catalogue entries and also a scholarly catalogue of the manuscript maps, which are, to a large extent, not originals but replicas and school exercises. There is also another way to proceed - at the Madrid History of Cartography conference in 2001 it was pointed out that it is important, from the scholar's viewpoint, that map collections and archives publicise such objects that are outside their normal collection range, and thus not likely to be expected or requested. That would mean, for the Royal Library, a web listing of non-Swedish manuscript maps to begin with, and this will be achieved within a reasonably short time.
The LIBRIS national union catalogue has switched its system to Endeavor's Voyager and MARC21 format. This has not yet meant any advantages for maps. What would be most important, Voyager's geospatial search module or any similar search capability, has not yet been included in the project. The printed carto-bibliography for 1999-2000, which was postponed because of the LIBRIS restructuring, was finally produced, as well as the volume for the current year. The future of this publication is a little precarious, as we haven't yet seen how the new system will function for this. Uppsala GeoLibrary is considering entering parts of their map collections into LIBRIS and the local system.

Exhibitions
A number of map exhibitions have been produced, e.g. by Gothenburg City Archive and Uppsala GeoLibrary.

Institutions
The Royal Library section containing the map collections has changed its name into KBMA, meaning Maps, Pictures, Music and Posters. The new section head is Eva Dahlman, with Göran Bäärnhielm continuing as Map Curator.

Map thefts: In early March 2001 it was discovered that the Royal Library had been struck by the same wave of map thefts as Helsinki, Copenhagen, The Hague and Wales. Further losses were discovered in April 2002. 62 maps have been lost, 9 have been recovered after a trip to London in September 2001, all trimmed, cleaned, repaired and nicely coloured. But the most important ones are missing. The affected volumes are 2 Ortelius, 5 Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius, 1 Speed and 2 Linschoten, the most deplorable loss being that of Barents' Arctic map (1597). The main consequences have been: another rebuilding of the Special Reading Room, an extra guard at the entrance door, strict control of clients, and restrictions on the delivery of rare materials.

Uppsala University Library: Maps and Pictures Section head Margareta Lindgren has retired and has been succeeded by Lars Munkhammar.

Lund University Library: The management of legal deposit maps will be transferred from the Manuscript Section to Special Collections, both belonging to the Cultural Heritage Division.

Map production etc.
The Swedish Land Survey has continued to develop their website for electronic shopping of air photographs, maps and digital data. You may order seamless maps of various scales centred on a spot of your choice for a large part of the country. These will be in digital format, and the cadastral map scale 1:12,500 is available as print-on-demand also. The marketing of digitized historical maps has been rather intense lately (for example, with a large poster display in the Stockholm underground).
There has been some discussion on the Land Survey's pricing policy for digital data, which has caused annoyance among other state agencies with insufficient funding (for example, museums and the cultural heritage institutions). The National Atlas has continued its thematic and regional volumes. A number of facsimiles of early nautical charts have been issued, as well as the CD Living Chart, which is not a navigation tool but rather a tourist chart inspired from Denmark.

Examples of innovations in Swedish cartography
The Swedish Cartographic Society has instituted an Innovation Prize in cartography. One example of its recipient would be producers of maps for the blind. The 2000 winner was Spectra Precision, a company producing measuring instruments, such as the Geodimeter. The 2001 winner was a retired officer who had been active in the development of new map types and the handling of maps within the military. The 2002 winner was a Strategic GIS project for the improvement of GIS competence among officials of the various regional administrations.

ISBD
The revision of the ISBD(CM) is still going on within the IFLA Geography & Maps and Cataloguing Sections. I am supposed to deliver a revised draft well before the next conference, which will be in Berlin.

Publications