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

National progress report of Switzerland 2006-2008
Jost Schmid (Zentralbibliothek Zurich)

Map Curator's Group
The discussion group about map cataloguing has finally edited and interpreted the AACR2-roules for maps. Thus map cataloguing in Swiss library networks is extensively harmonised.
A book about Swiss map libraries is to be edited soon in 2008 (Die kartographischen Sammlungen in der Schweiz). It consists of a short history about Swiss cartography as well as of articles about major Swiss map collections, written by many members of the national map curator's group. It includes a comprehensive index with descriptions of public Swiss map collections.
The group has decided to meet for general information exchange once a year and to realise a second meeting for specific workshops (in addition to this the discussion group for map cataloguing still meets twice a year). Such a workshop about digitalisation projects in Swiss map collections was held in May 2008 in the Zentralbibliothek Zurich with contributions of several institutions.
As Jürg Bühler has resigned as president of the map curators group because of retirement, Jost Schmid (Zentralbibliothek Zürich) was elected to head the team.

Online project
A project for a virtual library for geo-information has been initiated by the Swiss map curator's group and is managed by Jürg Bühler. It is funded by the national project 'E-lib.ch' together with other projects aiming towards a Swiss electronic library. This portal for maps will incorporate

Activities in map libraries
The Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo) in Berne has digitalised all editions of the Siegfried map (Topographischer Atlas der Schweiz) as well as of the Doufour map (Topographische Karte der Schweiz). Its aerial photograph archive (several hundreds of thousands of pictures) is about to be made accessible and is being preserved.
The Zentralbibliothek Zürich has digitalised and catalogued all its 1.000 manuscript maps. Their pictures are accessible via online-catalogue.
The Zentralbibliothek Bern has put its 16.000 maps of the Ryhiner collection on internet, together with the scans of the Siegfried map. The maps are shown with high resolution, due to the program 'Zoomify'. The online catalogue contains all Ryhiner maps and is connected with the pictures.
The internet link collection for maps worldwide Die Welt der Karten (run by the ETH library Zurich) contains currently 8.000 or so links, organised in about 100 pages. The home page (www.maps.ethz.ch) was newly designed and appears as an official website of the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).
The EAWAG library (part of ETH group) is engaged with the project 'clickable map' for geological maps: The map sheet index will be linked with the online catalogue. By clicking on the index sheet, users will be able to order maps online.

Working Group for the History of Cartography
The 22nd International Conference on the History of Cartography took place in Berne from 8 - 13 July 2007. There were 266 participants from 38 nations, 60 lectures and 40 posters (out of them 9 lectures and 6 posters were Swiss). The post conference tour led to Basel, Luzern, Rigi, Näfels, St. Gall und Zurich. For more about the conference, the visited exhibitions and the post conference tour see Cartographica Helvetica 36 (2007), pp. 36-45. See the complete abstracts volume, the conference programme and the list of participants on the website.

Exhibitions

Publications (selection)

Facsimiles and Reproductions