Imago Mundi

The International Journal for the History of Cartography

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Introduction

Jordana Dym

To cite this article: Jordana Dym (2023) Introduction, Imago Mundi, 75:1, 111-111, DOI:
10.1080/03085694.2023.2231750
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2023.2231750

Published online: 19 Oct 2023.

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 Forum: Collecting Born-Digital Maps

Introduction

Fig. 1. Mathematician Gladys West, seen reviewing Global Positioning System (GPS) data in 1985, contrib-
uted to US Navy satellite geodesy models that were later incorporated into GPS (U.S. Navy, 1985). On the
left is a data flow diagram from her Data Processing System Specifications for the GEOSAT Satellite Radar Altimeter
(NSWC, Dahlgren, VA, 1986), 5. (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Since the 1980s, a significant and increasing pro-
portion of map production, consumption and circu-
lation has been taking place in the digital realm.
That is, most maps are being created on computers
using proprietary or open-source software and
consulted on computer and mobile-device screens
(Fig. 1). For almost as long, institutional and indi-
vidual map collectors have acquired born-digital
maps and, when possible, the underlying data
used in creating them, in a race with ever-changing
technologies not only to collect but also to preserve
the maps and our ability to access them. Yet most
map scholars still think of map history and collect-
ing primarily as a paper and material endeavour
and have not systematically embraced research
using these born-digital maps.
This inaugural Imago Mundi Forum invites us to
consider the implications of the ‘digital turn’ in
map making for map collection and map history,
in essays by a private collector and three map librar-
ians working in American and European research
collections. Together, Pierre Bonneau (Bibliothè-
que nationale de France), Georgia Brown and
Marcy Bidney (American Geographical Society
Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee),
Christopher Fleet (National Library of Scotland),
and David Rumsey (Rumsey Map Collection) take
readers from research rooms in bricks-and-mortar
libraries to online programs and databases, from
technical and fiscal concerns to national and trans-
national legal contexts, and from consideration of
private markets to the public good. Their essays
offer insight into the complex responsibilities of
collectors and collection managers, who develop
and implement policies even as best practices and
definitions are works in progress.
For many Imago Mundi readers, the authors’
descriptions of the distinct strategies, opportunities
and constraints for acquisition, storage, and preser-
vation of, and access to, digital maps and mapping
may be a first brush with this topic. Therefore we
include a brief glossary of terms used by the
authors at the end of the forum with a list of refer-
ences and resources used to compile it. Pierre
Bonneau and Martin Davis (Digital Map Curator,
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford), were par-
ticularly patient and generous with explanations,
recommendations and wordsmithing; any enduring
errors or oversights are our own.
Jordana Dym
https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2023.2231750

Imago Mundi Vol. 75, Part 1: 111–129

© 2023 Imago Mundi Ltd ISSN 0308-5694 print/1479-7801 online