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IN THIS DOCUMENT:

Report from the 65th IFLA General Conference

Rendez-vous and Library Visit

Study Tour Bangkok Cartographic Institutions

Workshop: Managing Digital GeoData in Libraries

Geography and Map Libraries Standing Committee II

Special Libraries Coordinating Board II




Newsletter of the IFLA Section of Geography and Map Libraries (On-line)

Newsletter 43
December 1999

View onto the Chao Phraya River with hotels.

Report from the 65th IFLA General Conference

Bangkok, BITEC Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Center 20-28 August 1999

The 65th General Conference at Bangkok was attended by about 2000 participants. For Section officers, business started on Friday, August 20, 14.00 with the Special Libraries Coordinating Board, Chairman Ed Valauskas. Agenda contained administrative matters regarding the current conference and planning for the Jerusalem 2000 conference. Chairman emphasized the non-political context of IFLA conferences and encouraged sections to think of pre- and post-conferences in other parts of the region (Cairo, Damascus, Amman) and of a possible divisional program. A theme for this was proposed: Digital authenticity of special collections. The Amsterdam conference had given a profit of 200 000 Dutch guilders. There were also presentations of the conference programs of the various sections, discussion of INSPEL, the International Journal of Special Libraries, which is threatened by close-down if subscription rates don't go up.

BITEC Conference Center.

BITEC interior with conference staff.

Saturday, 21 August

Geography and Map Libraries Standing Committee I

Present:
David McQuillan, Chair, Olivier Loiseaux, Secretary, Göran Bäärnhielm, Treasurer, Natalia Kotelnikova, William Lamble, Patrick McGlamery, Pierre-Yves Duchemin, Nieves Iglesias Martinei (Head of Special Collections, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid). Apologies had been received from Chris Baruth, Anita Oser and Lothar Zögner. Melissa Lamont was to arrive the day after.William Lamble, Henrik Dupont, Lothar & Gudrun Zögner, Patrick McGlamery

  1. Reports included the World Directory project: 470 questionnaires from 88 countries had been received; 126 have been included from the 3rd edition, which makes a total of 696 entries. Processing continues and publication is exspected for spring 2000.

  2. Deadline for receiving answers is 15th January 2000.

  3. IFLA Geo & Maps Financial Report Bangkok August 1999

Date   Admin GEO-1 GEO-2 GEO-3 GEO-4 Bank Balance
15 Aug 98 Balance 822.38 17620.21 3520.00 9324.47 2900.00 34187.06
31 Dec 98 Interest +88.61         34275.67
25 Feb 99 From HQ +2508.83          
19 Mar 99 Directory   -17619.96     -2900.00  
10 Aug 99 Balance 3419.82 0.25 3520.00 9324.47 0.00 16264.54

In addition, 4600 Dutch guilders were transferred from HQ to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France for GEO-1, which is thus transformed into a Professional Board Project.

Figures are in Swedish Crowns.

Projects:

GEO-1:
The World Directory of Map Collections (Olivier Loiseaux)

GEO-2:
Catalogue of Electronic Cartographic Products (David McQuillan)

GEO-3:
Digital Chart of the World on the Internet (Patrick McGlamery)

GEO-4:
Geographical Indexing of Cartographic Documents (Olivier Loiseaux)

Expenses were for the Copenhagen excursion and workshop and for the mailing of the World directory questionnaries.

  1. Requests for 1999-2000: No requests were put forward.

  2. Review of current conference program. Local contact is: Ms. Sutannee Keesiri sutannee@nida.nida.ac.th

  3. Selection of officers: Olivier Loiseaux was elected Chair for 1999-2001. Lothar Zögner was elected Treasurer. Melissa Lamont was elected Secretary and Newsletter editor.

  4. IFLA G&M Leaflet: The new version was presented by David McQuillan. It needs translation into German, French, Spanish and Russian.

  5. Jerusalem meeting 2000: Short discussion of possible contents with emphasis on the non-political context.

  6. Boston meeting 2001: Possible pre- and post-conferences were discussed, also the publication of a handbook on the management of digital data.

  7. General: Announcements on a Russian Map Librarians' meeting, Archangelsk, June-July 2000 (Kotelnikova). Australian Map Circle meeting January 2000: http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/maps/amc2000.htm (Lamble).

Rendez-vous and Library Visit

In the afternoon, the Section had a rendevouz with Nima Chandler of Nancy Chandler Graphics, Bangkok-based producer of artistic maps, cards etc for tourists and other expatriates. She took us to the Neilson Hays Library on the Suriwongse Road, donated by a couple from New Zealand and built 1921 in a magnificient colonial architecture with arches and columns, run by a private association serving the reading needs of the foreign population in Bangkok. Later at a dinner in a local restaurant she demonstrated her company's production and a selection of other locally made maps and gave some entertaining glimpses of her work, having to cope with both legal and illegal competition.

Neilson Hays Library garden.

Neilson Hays Library interior.

Patrick McGlamery, Terry Plum, Nima Chandler and Natalia Kotelnikova discussing maps at Thai Restaurant.

In the evening followed, for IFLA Officers (i.e. Chair, Secretary, Treasurer), the Officer's Reception, which consisted of a boat trip on the river with abundant food and entertainment.

On Sunday August 22, some Section members took part in the Internet Discussion Group, especially the Digital Data / Metadata discussion, where parallells between maps and other non-book materials as tactile and sound documents were touched on..

On Monday August 23, at the Open Forum of the Division of Bibliographic Control, the Section's ISBD(CM) revision was mentioned in passing as a project taken up by Section on Cataloguing.

The same day Section members attended the Genealogy and Local History Discussion Group Theme: "Working at the Grassroots: Helping Patrons to Find their Progenitors and to Uncover the History that They Made", with contributions from Australia, China, Japan and US (Utah).

12:00-14:25 followed the Geography and Map Libraries Paper Session.

Ca 30 attendants. Contributions:

  1. Genealogical geography: place identification in the map library, by Bill Lamble, Western Australia.
    http://ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/045-94e.htm
  2. How to put your maps on the Internet, by David Lehling Allen, (New York, USA)
    http://ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/018-94e.htm
  3. .Impermanence of maps in the information age, by Patrick McGlamery, Connecticut, USA.
    http://ifla.org/IV/ifla65/papers/152-94e.htm

Speakers at Paper Session: Bill Lamble, Secretary, Chair, David Allen, Patrick McGlamery…

… and their audience.

The same afternoon followed the official opening, by Royal Princess Sirindhorn, who had some years ago studied GIS in the Netherlands.

Geo & Maps Officers: Chair & consort, Treasurer, Secretary, among audience at opening ceremony.

Study Tour Bangkok Cartographic Institutions

Tuesday, 24 August

  1. Thai Land Development Department, an agency for the planning and development of agriculture http://www.ldd.go.th. We were given an excellent and engaged presentation by Mr Chatchai Chinavornsiriwattana, who had been educated at the ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands (see the previous year's Newsletter). They use the ILWIS system among others for making g soil, land use and land use planning maps in the 76 provinces. Among sources are topographical maps, airphotos, Landsat and Spot images, soil, land use, precipitation and discharge data, combined with field surveys for the correction of borders and for socio-economic data such as population, religion and market, which are taken from from local administration and local farmers. No national census is made, being too expensive. Crops are mainly paddy in the lowlands, fruit trees on the elevated land (supervised by the Land Department) , while the hillsides and mountains are dominated by forests (which are often cut down) under the management of the Forest Department.

    Discussion: Decision-making: Data are used mainly by local administration on behalf of farmers, who are little educated. Decision Support System (DSS) has been studied for Cheng Mai, the northern capital. Other problems are deforestation and the opium fields which have been dangerous to inspect, being full of landmines, but now opium is grown mainly on boats which are constantly moving and thus hard to detect.

    Land Development Department Signboard.

    Mr Chatchai discussing with participants …

    … and lecturing to the group.

  2. National Research Council http://202.44.219.20/, Thailand Remote Sensing Center http://202.44.219.20/remoteSensing/intro.html , which is the regional Landsat Center for SE Asia. Ms Thongchai Simking demonstrated the various uses of satellite imagery: disaster prevention, hydrology, land use planning, natural resources management, the Hill Tribe project monitoring deforestation and drug cultivation. A recently produced video was shown, featuring the Landsat Ground Receiving Station, founded in 1982
    http://202.44.219.20/remoteSensing/groundRS.html. There were several testimonies to the patronage by the Royal Princess Sirindhorn for these activities, which had been named 'a significant contribution to the happiness of the Thai people'.

    National Research Council Signboard.

    Ms. Thongchai Simking demonstrating remote sensing images…

    … which are scrutinized by Bill Lamble and other participants.

  3. Royal Thai Survey mapshop, close to the Royal Palace. The planned visit to the Survey itself had been cancelled because of a border conference with Laos. But now various topographic maps 1:250 000 to 1:50 000 could be bought at low prices and contacts made for future acquisitions.

    Participants outside the Royal Thai Survey close to the Palace.

    Map acquisition with the assistance of volunteer Ms Supapan Tokhan.

  4. . Thai publisher Asia Books' bookstore in a large shoppingcenter close to the BITEC, where refreshments were served and a large selection of commercial maps could be browsed.

    On the same day there was a meeting of the Cataloguing Section's ISBD Review Group, where Pierre-Yves Duchemin presented the current revision of the ISBD(CM). There was some intense argument; Pierre-Yves and the undersigned were elected to the Review Group and two representatives from the group were to be included in the Geo & Maps ad hoc commission.

Wednesday, 25 August

Section made a field trip, arranged by Diethelm travel agency, to the southwest along the coast to tourist resort Prachuap Khiri Khan and Myanmar (Burma) border post Daan Singkhon at the narrowest part of Thai territory on the peninsula leading to Malaysia and Singapore. On the way, we visited salt pans along the road rather close to Bangkok, passed the memorial of the Siamese Twins Chang & Eng (1811-1874), visited a market on a railway track at Samut Songkhram town, pineapple plantations, a fishing and shipbuilding village and a hilltop Buddhist sanctuary with a fine view onto the sea surrounded by sugar-cone mountains. Our guide was a former police officer who had been wounded when fighting the Communist guerilla in the north. This was a fine and instructive countryside excursion in great contrast to the streets of Bangkok.
For a description of the area, see: http://www.bangkokpost.com/horizons/2612_hor1.html

Salt pans close to the coast west of Bangkok.

Processing shed at salt pans.

Market stalls on railway track at Samut Songkhram…

… have to be quickly removed when train arrives!

Map of Prachuap Khiri Khan region with road to Myanmar border.

View south along coast from hilltop Buddhist sanctuary at Prachuap Khiri Khan.

Thai border post on Myanmar border at Daan Singkhon.

Workshop: Managing Digital GeoData in Libraries

Thursday, 26 August

Chulalongkorn University Library

Instructors were: Patrick McGlamery & Terry Plum, University of Connecticut and Melissa Lamont, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Contents: General orientation on digital spatial data. Hands-on instruction in ArcExplorer including how to connect to the ArcExplorer Website for downloading data from the World Basemap. Orientation on Digital Spatial Metadata.

See: Digital Map Librarianship: A working syllabus http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/ifla/ Attendants were 25 in number, half from IFLA, half Thai librarians and students from the Chulalongkorn Univ. institute of geography.

Instructors and participants at Digital Geodata Workshop.

Geography and Map Libraries Standing Committee II

Friday, 27 August

Administrative matters: Revised officer's manual and new officer's training session were announced. It had been proposed to the Council that standing committee candidates could be nominated by one institutional member of the section instead of two. Melissa Lamont had accepted being the Section's Secretary, Newsletter editor and Information coordinator. She reported from the International Cartographic Association Conference at Ottawa the week before, which included a meeting of the Congress of Cartographic Specialist Associations. Program is at:
http://www.geog.uvic.ca/ica1999/program.htm

Jerusalem 2000 conference: Various program ideas were put forward: Maps as tools for cooperation within land and water management; open session on old maps, workshop on new technology; two-part workshop on ArcExplorer and international resources metadata; possibly multiple paper sessions. Contacts were to be taken with geographers, Land Survey departments and other institutions within Israel and other countries of the region including the Palestinian Authority. The important Eran Laor map collection, now at the Jewish National and University Library, connected with the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, would be one obvious object for a visit. Dates are earlier: August 13-18, i.e. first meetings will be on Friday August 11.

The meeting included ceremonies of acknowledgement for our local contact person and a presentation by Prannok Witthaya Maps Center, producer of general and regional tourist maps of Thailand.

Prannok Witthaya Maps Center presentation at Standing Committee II.

Chairman congratulates our local contact person Sutannee Keesiri.

Standing Committee II. From left: Patrick McGlamery, David Allen, Melissa Lamont, Olivier Loiseaux, Pierre-Yves Duchemin, Bill Lamble, David McQuillan, Natalia Kotelnikova, Göran Bäärnhielm.

Special Libraries Coordinating Board II

Hans-Christoph Hobohm, INSPEL editor, Potsdam, was elected chair. Discussion was mainly on the plans for Jerusalem.

Saturday, 28 August Was the day for excursions. A popular one went to the ancient capital of Ayutthaya, another to the bridge on the river Kwai of World War II fame and much esteemed by Western Europeans, while many Eastern and non Europeans preferred a tour to the Damnoen Saduak Floating market at Ratchaburi, the Rose Garden Cultural Village on the Ta Chin river with elephant riding and folkore performances including Thai boxing, and the Human Imagery Museum close by, which displayed images of Thai monarchs, famous monks and country folk and also an exhibition on the history of slavery as a tribute to the achievements of King Chulalongkorn in abolishing slavery in Thailand. Among notable acquaintances on the trip was Nerses Hayrapetyan, president of the Armenian Library Association, who told me of a substantial map collection at Jerevan National Library.

Coconut sugar production.

Damnoen Saduak Floating Market.

IFLA Geography & Map Libraries Standing Committee

Chairman:
Olivier Loiseaux
Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Département des Cartes et Plans
58 rue de Richelieu
75084 Paris, Cedex 02, France
Tel: + 33 - 1 - 47038356,
Fax: +33 - 1 - 47038361
E-mail: olivier.loiseaux@bnf.fr

Secretary:
Melissa Lamont

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ,McLean Lab. MS#8
Data Library and Archives
Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA
Tel: +1 - 508 - 289 - 3396
Fax: +1 - 508 - 457 - 2183
E-mail: mlamont@whoi.edu

Treasurer:
Lothar Zögner

Kartenabteilung
D-10772 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 / 0 - 30 / 266 - 24 19
E-mail: lothar.zoegner@sbb.spk-berlin.de

Standing Committee 1997-2001:
Ms Natalia Kotelnikova, Russian Federation
Patrick McGlamery, USA
Lothar Zögner, Germany

Standing Committee 1999-2003:
Christopher Baruth, USA
Francisco Jose Bonachera Cano, Spain
Ms Melissa Lamont, USA
Olivier Loiseaux, France
Pierre Planques, France
Ms Rachel Rowe, United Kingdom

Observers:
Ms A.M. Casassas Ymbert, Spain
Pierre-Yves-Duchemin, France
Ms. L. Dubreuil, Canada
Jan Smits, Netherlands
F. Wawrik, Austria
David C. McQuillan, USA
Göran Bäärnhielm, Sweden

Observe that answers for the World Directory of Map Collections are to be sent to Olivier Loiseaux (address above) no later than January 15, 2000.

ISBD(CM) Revision

Göran Bäärnhielm and Pierre-Yves Duchemin have been elected to the ISBD Review Group chaired by John Byrum, Library of Congress. Dorothy McGarry dmcgarry@library.ucla.edu is the Review Group's representative to the ISBD(CM) project group, which also includes Göran Bäärnhielm, Henrik Dupont, Copenhagen, Lothar & Gudrun Zögner, Berlin, Pierre-Yves Duchemin and Olivier Loiseaux, Paris.
The Second Draft has not been finished at the time of writing this, but should be exspected end January. Comments would then be received until the end of April.

Jerusalem 2000

Message circulated November 23 1999:
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) will meet in Jerusalem from August 13 - 18, 2000. The theme for this coming meeting is: "Information for Cooperation: Creating the Global Library of the Future."

The Section of Geography and Map Libraries (G&M) will host paper sessions, field trips, library visits, and a GIS Workshop. If you would like to participate in these activities, please contact David C. McQuillan, Map Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 (davidmcq@sc.edu), who is serving as the program planner for the G&M Section. Abstracts for papers should be received by January 7, 2000. Topics on historical cartography, new technologies for the coming century, and local history and cartography, would be especially welcome. This is a big year for Jerusalem and you can be a part of it by attending and participating in the IFLA G&M meetings in August 2000.

David C. McQuillan, Map Librarian

Thomas Cooper Library
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29201
Phone: +1 - 803 - 777-4723
Fax: +1 - 803 - 777-4661
E-mail: davidmcq@sc.edu

This Newsletter was edited by:

Göran Bäärnhielm, The Royal Library - National Library of Sweden.
PO Box 5039, SE-102 41 Stockholm, Sweden
Fax: +46-8-4634328
E-mail: goran.baarnhielm@kb.se

Future Newsletters will be edited by Secretary Melissa Lamont. Address: see above.

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