Maps Cataloging Team milestone: Pennsylvania maps cataloging completed

Members of the Maps Cataloging Team in the Cataloging and Metadata Services Department recently achieved a major milestone with the completion of the cataloging of the Pennsylvania maps. The team began cataloging the entire maps collection to full level standards in 1995 and a decision was made at that time to start the process by working on maps of international places beginning with Australia and New Zealand. After completing the international maps, in 2010, team members began cataloging those maps in the collection that cover the United States starting with Maine and continuing through New England and the Northeast then began work on the Pennsylvania maps collection.

This project included:

  • creating bibliographic records for previously uncataloged maps
  • enhancing existing minimal-level records created decades ago
  • adding titles and headings to make retrieval easier
  • adding or correcting call numbers to allow maps to be filed properly
    and quickly found in maps drawers
  • adding subject and form genre headings that collocate maps with intuitive terms
  • adding coordinates which will facilitate future geographic searching

Record creation and enhancement work was done from the start using the international cataloging standards until a major change in standards occurred in 2013 across the profession to RDA. Five years later the Donald W. Hamer Maps Library has the most completely cataloged collection of Pennsylvania maps in the country. Completing this important work means that our entire collection Pennsylvania is accessible through OCLC’s WorldCAT.

timeline depiction of maps cataloging projects from 2010 through 2016

Click on the image above to view at full size.

In all the team touched 8,766 titles over a five-year duration in this project. The team additionally worked on 2,317 Sanborn Fire Insurance titles and 2,800 Flood Insurance Rate titles, for a total of 13,883 titles/52,973 sheets over seven years.

To put this accomplishment in perspective, the project encompassed 93% of the Pennsylvania map collection in the Maps Library and Annexes while the team also worked on other projects simultaneously for the Maps Collection and the Earth and Mineral Sciences Library’s cartographic collections.

image-2-pie-chart

Click on the image to view the graphic at full size.

Other notable Pennsylvania collections previously cataloged in the Maps Library include:

  • Topographic series maps – 9,621 sheets/1,088 titles
  • Aerial photographs – 2724 sheets/4 titles

The Team recently finished cataloging all Maryland and Washington, D.C., maps.

Congratulations to the Maps Cataloging Team on this accomplishment. Now on to the rest of the country! Westward Ho!

 

– submitted by Heather Ross, Donald W. Hamer Maps Library