Rare Maps Digitisation Project
Abstract
Access to the world’s library collections of early cartographic material has until recent years been largely limited for researchers to personal visits or chance viewing of their material of interest in exhibitions and publications.
The development of digital spatial data during the 1980s and the Internet and metadata in more recent years has provided libraries with more options for making their rare, fragile and valuable collections available to researchers. Pioneering work undertaken by the Library of Congress, University of Georgia and British Columbia Archives and Record Service, to name a few, to provide static or scanned images of their rare and fragile map collections over the Internet has provided a stimulus to others to do likewise.
This paper outlines a series of projects currently underway at the National Library of Australia to make its collections of rare maps more accessible to researchers.
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