Librarians and their maps: a look at some of the problems

Until quite recently librarians on the whole were ill‐equipped for being custodians of maps. Even now one fears this is less rarely the case than it ought to be. Hair‐raising stories of early maps in public libraries, wrongly dated, wrongly ascribed, completely unorganised, accounts of antique atlases deposited with love by nineteenth‐century aldermanic benefactors, unguarded, rebound in buckram bindings with ‘912’ stamped on their spines — these and other horror stories are still being swopped by bemused researchers who have had the fortune to stumble on them. What makes this sort of thing the more disturbing is that the number of maps — thanks to natural wear and tear and exports to American universities — is constantly diminishing. Decreasing numbers and increasing demand spells soaring prices. A copy of Horwood's 32 sheet map of London 1792–99 went for £3 at the Gardner sale in 1924. Today one would have to pay something in the region of £250 for the same map. Just on financial grounds alone then we have something of a moral duty to know about our map stocks.