Map Collection Users' Group

Minutes of Meeting
Wednesday 28 February 2001

1. Attendance

Richard Pennell - Chair (History), Francisco Escobar (Geomatics), Bernie Joyce (Earth Sciences), Chandra Jayasuriya (Geography), Ray Wyatt (Geography), Mario Gutjahr (Archi & Planning), Tony Sagona (Classics & Archaeology), Brendan Whyte (Student Rep), Peta Humphreys (Melbourne Branches), Tim Meredith (Melbourne Branches), Priscilla Stott (Collection Management), John Cain (Map Curator).

Tim Meredith (Head, Melbourne Branches) and Peta Humphreys (Coordinator, Architecture, Educaiton and Engineering Information Services) were introduced to the meeting.

2. Apologies

Nigel Flannigan (Architecture & Planning), John Maidment (Architecture & Planning Library), Brian Finlayson (Geography).

3. Minutes of the Previous Meeting

The minutes were accepted.

4. Business Arising

Weeding - John Cain reported last years weeding project, dealing with standard sized single maps, has been completed. About 2500 maps were withdrawn, of 10 000 in this part of the collection. The withdrawn maps duplicates and maps that are outside the collection policy.
Accessing Digital Maps - John reported that a new page collecting information about a selection of our digital map data for GIS has been mounted on the Map Collection's digital mapping page.
Fee for service - John reported about one order per week is being received from businesses.
Strom river surveys - Brian Finlayson has provided a CD of these, which will be catalogued and added to the collection.

5. Information Division Restructure

JTim Meredith spoke about the new structure arising from the reorganization of the Information Division. The Map Collection is now part of the Melbourne Branches Section of the Client Services Department, one of six new departments making up the Information Division. Other departments include IRA (Information Resources Access) and TLRS (Teaching, Learning and Research Support). Within Melbourne Branches, the Map Curator now reports to the Information Services Coordinator for Architecture, Education and Engineering, Peta Humphreys.

6. Progress of Map Collection 2001 Operational Plan

John Cain noted that due to the reorganization of the Information Division progress has been slow. However work on a number of objectives is underway. Of particular note that about 100 aerial photos of inner Melbourne, dated 1945, have been digitised. Also the provision of attractive images historical maps from the Map Collection, for downloading as computer desktop wallpapers, is almost complete. Access to both of these is from the Map Collection's digital mapping page. We are also awaiting a response to our proposal to digitise the fire insurance plans of Melbourne and make them available on the Web, we are hopeful this proposal will be accepted.

7. Additions to the Collection

Noteworthy recent arrivals include:

• Indonesia 1:250 000 Topographic Map Series (Bakosurtanal) - about 100 sheets providing coverage mainly of Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi have been acquired; this is all that has been published out of 250 sheets to cover the whole of Indonesia.
• GIS and Geophysical data (GSV) - about 30 CDs of this data have been provided for free by the Geological Survey of Victoria. Thank to Bernie Joyce for this suggestion.
• IRDB 2000 (ABS) - the Integrated Regional DataBase from the Australian Bureau of Statistics provides a wide range of ABS and other government data down to regions as small as SLAs.

8. Departmental Map Needs (standing item)

Any requests can be emailed to John Cain at any time. It was agreed that John would forward an email to MCUG members for them to circulate around their Departments, noting that requests for maps and GIS spatial data should be made to John.

9. Other Business

None was raised.

10. Next meeting

The next meeting will be at 11:00 am on Friday 1 June 2001 in ERC Seminar Room 2.

John Cain, 6 April 2001. e:\maps\mcug\2001feb-minutes.doc