The collections
Australian map acquisitions
The opportunity to explore the contents of an antiquarian map dealers shop must be almost every map librarians dream but sometimes comes along only once in a working lifetime. Such an opportunity arose recently with the announcement that one of Australias most prominent antiquarian print and map retailers, Spencer Scott Sandilands, at 546 High Street, East Prahran, Melbourne was to close its doors by the end of May. With the further offer of a 33.3% discount off most stock, it was too good an opportunity to miss.
NLA Map Curator, Maura OConnor, made a flying visit to East Prahran in the last week of April, coincidentally the day the building, an 1890s construction, was also being auctioned. She was let loose and spent several hours examining and finding material not usually listed in dealers cataloguesin particular, late nineteenth-century thematic mapping by government and commercial publishers. This material is becoming increasingly important as it reflects changes in Australias rural, industrial and social development that have continued to make an impact right through the twentieth century. Among the items Maura found were a hand drawn map of a survey of gold- producing areas around Delegate (NSW) and North Gippsland (VIC) dated ca. 1855, and a French map of Catholic missions in Australia, published in 1906.
A recent visit to Adelaide to meet with current government and commercial map publishers was also rewarding. The advent of digital mapping has meant that there are now more opportunities to present data spatially than existed previously. Of particular interest and importance is mapping being conducted to reflect the complexity of Native Title agreements, some of which are combined with mining claims.
Further good news for map librarians and researchers! The South Australian State Gazetteer database, one of the most complex currently available in Australia, will be on the Internet some time in 2000, with reference to retrospective place names included where applicable. In the interim, the National Library hopes to make a copy available on CD-ROM through its Map Reading Room.
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au