Update on the Ordnance Survey international colleciton
Gill, Eunice
Powerpoint presentation.
At the last Cambridge Conference it was announced that the Ordnance Survey International Library would be closed. This library was originally that of the Directorate of Overseas Surveys (DOS) which had been housed in the Ordnance Surveyys head office in Southampton since 1984 when the two organisations merged. In 2003 Ordnance Survey issued a statement indicating that the collection would not disappear. Instead the National Archives would be working with Ordnance Survey to ensure that the collection continued to be made available to the many specialist users as well as being made available for the general public. This presentation provided an update on the progress being made towards this stated aim. Ordnance Survey has a statutory duty to ensure that records of national importance are deposited for permanent preservation. The first stage in permanent preservation is to select those records to be preserved. This was accomplished with the assistance of an expert panel drawn from the surveying community and included a number of former DOS employees. However, it was recognised early on that much of the contents of the library would have value to the wider community and as such the impacts on the decisions to dispose must be considered. The library itself contains around 50,000 maps, 1.5 million aerial photographs and associated survey data relating to 60 different countries. Such a large amount of material required an organised programme of appraisal and disposal. This was managed by a specialist board within Ordnance Survey; the National Archives were invited to sit on this board.
Event: Expanding horizons in a shrinking world
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