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John Moore, Subject Librarian for Geographical and Earth Sciences on how Digimap has changed the way we work.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is indeed an honour for me to be invited to give a paper at this 10th birthday celebration. And since we are still in the January of a new decade it is perhaps appropriate that we look back as well as forwards to reflect on how landscape of cartographic geospatial information and provision in higher education has changed in the last ten years. I hope you’ll notice that I’ve slightly changed the title I was asked to talk to.

I’m always astonished when I watch courtroom dramas on television that witnesses always seem to remember what they were doing on the 9th dot dot dot, and I hardly seem to remember what happened yesterday when I ask myself. So, since there are others better placed to give an overview of the Digimap story, I’m going to avoid too historical a narrative. On the other hand, it can prove useful to be reminded of just what has changed in the time since the launch of Digimap, and it’s salutary for me in particular since I was possibly one of the most severe critics of it as an original end site rep.

From a personal point of view, my career as map librarian parallels closely the availability of Digimap since I was appointed to yet another position in my calendar of tasks in late 1998. And at that time Glasgow had just been added to the group of participating libraries chosen as a cross section of services within the UK higher education section to test the original eLib project – which had begun in the academic session of 1996-97. I think at the outset it is most important to remember that Digimap is only part of a whole sea change in the way in which information is provided to a university community. However, today we are concentrating on geospatial information, and at the time of the original project description, academic libraries were facing a serious problem in their ability to provide users with map coverage for all their needs. Nonetheless, by the end of the last century map libraries were increasingly used to handling electronic map data through the medium of CD-ROM – mapping packages such as digital chart of the world for example. But the traditional means by which end users consulted detailed paper maps were under threat through a range of pressures including rising prices, shrinking resources within libraries, and the reduction in the availability of paper products as suppliers moved on – particularly in the large scales to digital map projects.

I think it would be true to say that by the last decade of the 20th Century, university map libraries were facing quite a sharp choice: you either adapt or you decay and die. The days of the large map deposit schemes ordinations were well over and those collections which had grown up under the benevolence of the old ministry of defence disposal scheme, or who had relied really quite heavily on generous duplicates and gifts from other libraries who were better endowed, they no longer sought to be as comprehensive in their coverage as they once were – and this was particularly true as budgets were being squeezed, and particularly more now space issues became a higher priority.

In the summer of 1999, I was asked to address the map curators group of the British cartographic society. Now – they were the very group whose deLiberations in 1992 on the position of maps within academic libraries led to David Ferro’s instigation of the initial Digimap project – part of the post Follett eLib programme. My title in that address was: ‘The New Millennium and the University Map Collection: A View from the Side Lines’. And I thought it was valuable to re-read what I said then as a reflection of what life seemed to be like in a pre-Digimap era. I began by discussing change and how it is increasingly dynamic, more complex and demands ever greater ability in its management. So, there’s nothing different there from today. Even more so since I cautioned that change often is too readily calls to remembrance the words of the hymn writer Henry Francis Lyte: that decay is also an inevitable partner of such dynamics. If you’re in Scotland you have to know that ‘Abide with Me’ is a fairly popular hymn in the Presbyterian canon. Equally, the basic needs for a comprehensible digest of the complex patterns and elements of the world in which we inhabit also remains unchanged.

Back in 1999, I looked at the then current state of the 96 British academic map collections outside the copyright deposit libraries as listed in the directory of UK map collections – which is a publication issued by the map collectors group. These represented the holdings of 72 separate HEIs – a figure well below half of the 172 institutions listed in the JISC circular 12 98 the consultation paper Ordnance Survey digital map data. In comparison with the previous edition of that directory produced in 1985, the figure of 96 had risen from 77 in either university of FE college collections, of which only 12 were located in main university libraries. By 1999 I was one of a very rare species of only 18 map librarians working within a university library. And at that time I observed that there seemed to be an awful lot of academic institutions which either did not have maps in a separate identifiable collection, or did not recognize that collection as a significant element within their institutions. Interestingly enough, even then 21 of the 76 largest institutions - as defined by JISC as particular in their circular – 21 of those 76 made no return to the directory of map collections. And more significantly my analysis of the 96 academic collections showed that 63.5% were held in departments of geography or earth sciences rather than within university library collections. And this led me to ask whether or not it benefits an academic community to have its map resources within one particular department. What Digimap very quickly showed us, was that no matter where paper maps were located the use of geospatial information was so diverse that there was no one ideal solution. And a study of the demonstrator service between 1997 and 1999 produced Digimap’s first mantra: 80% of users were non-geographers, how often have I heard that?! When I looked on Monday, which is when I got the chance to prepare this paper, there are now 151 institutions signed up for Digimap, of which only 52 seem to have site representatives based in a central library. And there are an equal number where the person to contact is either part of a computing or an IT or a learning resources service. 16 are still to be found in geographical or environmental sciences departments – so again, not much has changed in that sense. Given that the project at the outset had an aim to support and enhance the work of university map librarians, I think it would be true to say that many whose experience was largely based on paper map collections had failed to meet the demands for the levels of technical skill required in the use of GIS programmes and digital map data. And this was an issue which David Ferro, as project manager, had highlighted at the very outset. In 1999, Nick Millea - who is the map librarian at Bodleian library –had to admit, even at that point, that Oxford itself with the resources it had, their plan to turn their map room into a cartographic digital data resource centre, proved to be an unrealistic expectation. Those departmental cartographers and technicians who frequently doubled up as curators are far more knowledgeable and have greater expertise in the technical and technological aspects of modern mapping provision than most mainstream academic librarians.

At Glasgow, our service very heavily relies on the advice and input of Mike Shand, who is the geography department cartographer. And it is my impression that the most effective means to offer a bespoke geospatial information service is more likely to be within a unit which provides guidance relating to cartographic material, GIS techniques and reproduction services, possibly along the lines of the learning resources centre at the University of Portsmouth under David Sherren. Even within that setting I remember David saying to me that the paper map collection was still under threat. The increased sophistication and availability of geospatial information requires a day to day adaptability and familiarity, which cannot always be met by those working in a main university library context. And as a consequence of the changing pattern of demand and usage, we’ve seen the closure or dispersal of several significant collections including those at Edinburgh, Durham, and Swansea Universities. Of course this is part of a far wider move away from the large paper holdings as with the dispersal of the Ordnance Surveys own historical map archive and of concentration of academic collections solely in support of teaching and research within their own institutions. On the other hand, it is true that the availability of Digimap as a service has not been over looked by senior university administrators who are looking to save space and money.

In the year 2000 I again spoke at the map curator’s group annual workshop and on this occasion my topic was a consideration of the first year of the Digimap service. One point I made at that presentation was Digimap was challenging, particularly as it needed a small team of individuals as the most effective site support solution. And it’s interesting that of the institutions presently listed as using Digimap, only 17 have more than one site representative named – so there’s still work to do there and things have not really changed very much in that situation either. And at that conference at Oxford I also argued that the service was bureaucratic and expensive- well we can all get things wrong and nothing much has changed there either. If I was to be completely honest with myself and this audience, I’d say that the one major impact of Digimap on British academic libraries has been that it has led to a focusing on provision to users. Whether for good or not collections are being looked at in far greater detail with regard to the relevance to the holding of institutions. As an aside, the same is happening with paper periodical holdings – but whereas these are being investigated with a view to a national research reserve – which is the UKRR and UKRR2 – no such similar cooperative project has been noted for maps. This focus has shown that many collections were dated and incomplete, but one downside of the dispersal of these collections has been that the local availability of maps to non university users has been constrained. This division of access of materials is very much part of a contemporary e-provision picture, and it may appear to be a slightly minor issue, but it does mean that collections are no longer available to all people across the board and I still feel this is quite an unfortunately situation at a time when we’ve got all these television programmes on about map man and coast and things like that, people are more familiar with maps through very good quality reproductions like those done by Berlin, satellite navigation tools, google earth mapping, people are more aware of mapping. But for the non-academic, the availability of maps isn’t as available as it once was.

Returning to the focus of provision of users it is significant in another way, because Digimap has been amazingly supportive to site representatives and those who face problems in using data. We’ve got workshops, newsletters, educational materials, online support and a help desk – as I say invaluable. What has altered beyond doubt has been the contact between the map collections staff and their users. This was brought to light early in the development of the project when the test sites had to contact users to find out what data they might require. Direct access now to networked electronic resources has eroded the immediacy of the more traditional map room enquiry. Today, as a site representative, I have a far less clear image of who is using the map service that we offer at Glasgow since the majority of Digimap users register online and make direct use of the service without any support. The issue here still remains one of user satisfaction. Are those who log in finding what they want and getting the best out of the service? I wonder for example if those who are using Historic Digimap – this is the Glasgow log-ins –are put off by the quality of the original scans and possibly unaware of the superb collection of Ordnance Survey county series mapping that is available in paper at Glasgow, or through the National Library website.

Well even here, this is not something that’s changed radically because it’s more of a need to promote collections than anything else. And I think this is an important issue that was raised by Nick Millea in 1999, because it has somewhat undermined the role of the map librarian within the academic community – and this has been an ongoing thing since well before 1999. However, I think it would be foolish to accuse the service of something which may well have happened in due course anyway – and that’s not just in the area of digital map data that subject experts are being bypassed by service providers. However, if you look at the log-ins, the use of map products has far exceeded anything which we experienced in the pre-Digimap era. The figures outweigh any number of visitors to the map collection and more than just looking at the one thing of Ordnance Survey data – Digimap, as we well know, gives you a range of geospatial data, historical, marine and maritime, and geological mapping.

Other aspects of change would surely, within the universities, include the development of vastly superior colour reproduction services as expectations were raised and readers made greater demands for better quality prints. Anyone now working in the university information world will also admit to the difficulties faced by raised expectations based on the quality of the Digimap service. I wonder how many undergraduates are dashed to find that they cannot get the same quality of map coverage for other parts of the world – or the same detail of coverage from earlier centuries. It really was very remiss of medieval geographers never to have instigated 25 inch scaled mapping in the 13th century.

Importantly, in my opinion the advent of Digimap has also led to a significant change in the relationship between the academic community and the public bodies providing geospatial information. The difficulties once faced in obtaining permission from the Ordnance of Geological Surveys to reproduce extracts of maps now appear to be very much a thing of the past, and the various members of EDINA must take great credit for that – it’s a much easier environment. Probably the most valuable aspect of Digimap has been that it’s exceeded in convincing the Ordnance Survey to accommodate this unprecedented access to its digital map data without the crippling financial outlay that it might otherwise have caused us. I’m the secretary of LIBER Groupe des Cartothécaires and I can assure you that this facility is the envy of many of our European colleagues. The new avenues opened up for research by the availability of data is an incontrovertible improvement on what we can offer, and the skills that students are learning when using it are clearly key assets when they start to look for jobs.

At the end of all my reflections on what’s been said and what’s happened in the intervening decade, I’ve come to one clear conclusion, and that is that human beings change things. We still need what Andrew Tatham highlighted as 3 core elements of a service: knowledge, resources, and confidence. And the greatest of these may be confidence. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to suggest that the advent of Digimap services has been the most important and influential event in British map librarianship in the last 40 years. But David Medyckyj-Scott hit the nail in the head when he e-mailed me in 2004, he was interested in the state of university map libraries and the impact of Digimap on such libraries, and he closed: “In a recent review of Digimap, it was considered preferable for questions about usage to be answered by institutional representatives. Digimap believes, and I have to agree with them, that the expertise no longer exists in the institutions to do this” – and I think he was dead right.

Before its launch, Digimap itself recognised that without appropriate support the use of data will be restricted to expert users and uptake will be limited, and it will appear to be that the service rather than the library is providing such support - and I think that is true in the general pattern of what is happening in academic libraries. I remain convinced that the support staff have a vital role to play as facilitators and evaluators of the service, but whether or not they are located within HEIs offering Digimap may now be a moot point. Individuals can make a service in a map collection a success – that was true 10 years ago and will be true 100 years from now. Those who rise to the challenge will find it discomforting, they will find it painful at times, but the alternative strikes me as something far worse. In 2004 I addressed LIBER conference about map libraries being relegated to the sidelines in a time of what I described as an era of digital map soup. But rather than assuming the role of contributing chef or chief dietician to the dish on offer, map libraries collections might be seen as the purveyors probably more similar to the small corner shop with all its limitations rather than the data supermarket – and in the patois of Scots catering – ‘Soups ‘Aff’. If I was being truthful with you today, my present fear is that the shop is now too often closed.

In my 1999 address to the map curators I made reference to Gavin Bell’s book ‘In Search of Tusitala’ which was a record of his travels in the Pacific in the footsteps of another good thing to come out of Edinburgh – Robert Louis Stevenson – himself no mean hand at creating a pretty good and memorable map – Treasure Island for those who are maybe not as literate as I am! On the island of Butaritari in Kiribati he meets the local sage whose first words are: ‘History is important, it tells us where we came from and our place in the world’. This Friday, as few of you here may know is the anniversary of the battle of Isandlwana in the Zulu war on the 22nd of January 1879. A crushing defeat for the British army at the height of its imperial power when a whole regiment – with modern weapons, modern technology – was completely annihilated by a Zulu army. And whether or not you view me as one of these sad red coats about to be extinguished, we can learn things from this long forgotten disaster: knowledge, resources, and confidence are not perhaps enough. We still need intelligent analysis and expertise. Decisions we make today can have serious implications on tomorrow. Over stretching resources and what we try to do can lead to seriously bad results. And we need everyone to play their part in full understanding of the requirements of the service.

So have things changed? Of course they have- immeasurably. What has changed has been the whole way in which we can offer geospatial data and it is to Digimap’s staff credit that the change has been so innovative, well supported and successful. While we live in an imperfect world, and there may be things which some users may prefer in a different style or way of delivery, I do think that Digimap can hold up its head as something that we can all be very pleased with and take pride in. Had the academic map community risen to the challenge in a similar way, I might be talking to a far wider cross section of those stake holders today. So happy birthday Digimap and many happy returns of the day and I look forward to the next ten years if only viewing from the sidelines – thank you very much.