Printing your maps + Donations

[Kanny]

*** Edited 31/08/2018 to reflect the fact that I'm looking to reinvigorate this project - should interest from the guild be high enough ***

Dear all,

I'm a librarian at Cambridge University Library working in the Map Room and I've recently been trying to extend our collection of fantasy maps (or maps of Imaginary Places as we classify them). I've been a long time fantasy/sci-fi fan myself and since getting my job here I've taken it on myself to ensure that we have a good collection of such works, so we can keep and conserve them for future generations.

The Map Room itself holds about 2 million paper maps (we don't really do digital - well, we do but on a much more limited scale). Included in the collection are many of the generic fantasy maps you can think of (Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Discworld and so on) but I've been trying to extend this out more widely and as a result we now have many maps from novels, role playing games, video games, TV shows. Obviously, as this kind of material has not been sort after by the department for some time, the collection is in no way complete - in fact its still quite small (probably about 100-150 items) so there is a lot of room for improvement.

Anyway, on to my main point. I've recently started a project which aims to reproduce maps from the the Cartographers Guild in a physical format, with the intention to store, catalogue and preserve them within our collection.

I've already begun building this collection thanks to many kind responses from people reading this post and would of course like to gain more items where possible. If you interested these are the ways to add your work to our collection:

1) Firstly if your feeling very generous and we would love to accept paper copies of your work (provided they are both of readable size). For postage details please contact me via PM.

2) You can send me high res digital files which I can then take to a printer in order to reproduce them. I will probably want to print items at A2 size, but may also reproduce them at A3 or A1 depending upon the size necessary to make the information readable. Again if this interests you please send me a PM.

Reguarless of the option you choose I will also need a certain number of details to catalogue an item to a basic level...

Title of work
Authors name
Year of publication (or creation in this case)
Setting *

*: I'm thinking it may be useful to know if a map is from a series of unified works, so if the map pertains to a specific world/setting I think that would be (Middle Earth, for example).

While I would love to take a copy of everything people here have produced I will probably have to assert some form of quality control, which I hope you can all understand. I will also be focusing on maps of worlds, continents, islands, cities or towns (probably in that order). Maps of smaller areas like dungeons, castles or other such things would be much lower priority, though I may make exception if the quality or style of the work was very high or unique. I will probably also focus upon maps of places outside existing intellectual properties (like the lord of the rings) as we likely already have maps of those places that have been produced and published for the market.

I should also reiterate that the purpose of this entire thing is not to take any forms of rights from you. Its simply an effort to store examples of such works in a physical archive.

I will probably start sending people PMs asking if they are happy to contribute their work, requesting high res images that I can print from. If your interested in the idea please feel free to contact me.

If you want to see a response from my manager to another guild member confirming my identity you can view that here:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...l=1#post272878

and if you would like to see some photos (sorry for my bad camera work) of the first batch of maps donated by members of the Cartographers Guild within the Map Room please go here:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...l=1#post273144

Also if you would like to learn more about the Map Room please follow this link:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/maps

Best wishes,

Ian

*Edited 22/06/2015 - reworded to reflect the creation of the project, which was not the original purpose of the post.*
*Edited 31/08/2018 - updated to reflect the possible reinvigoration of the project.**

[J.Edward]

Hey Kanny
Welcome to the Guild.
I have wondered myself if any here would want to do a book of Guild maps.
I can already see many financial and rights issues that would be thorny but it would be interesting.
When you speak of 'donating', what does that entail? Is this involving rights for use or something?
To have professionally printed maps made and shipped to you in the UK would not be cheap and I don't know many who would be interested in doing that free of charge.
While it might be cool to know my work might be in the Cambridge U. Lib. Map room, I'm not sure if I would want to incur the cost to get it there.

[johnvanvliet]

sounds like a good idea.
What i do dose not transition to printed paper well so..............

3d space and printed paper do not mix well

[Kanny]

Hey Kanny
Welcome to the Guild.
I have wondered myself if any here would want to do a book of Guild maps.
I can already see many financial and rights issues that would be thorny but it would be interesting.
When you speak of 'donating', what does that entail? Is this involving rights for use or something?
To have professionally printed maps made and shipped to you in the UK would not be cheap and I don't know many who would be interested in doing that free of charge.
While it might be cool to know my work might be in the Cambridge U. Lib. Map room, I'm not sure if I would want to incur the cost to get it there.

Hiya, thanks for responding!

By donate, I simply mean giving a copy of the item to the library for conversation and preservation purposes. This is not in anyway attached to giving over image rights or anything like that, my aim is simply to build up a collection of fantasy or sci-fi maps for future generations to enjoy.

As you say, postage to the UK is probably prohibitively expensive for many of you and thus if its something people don't want to do that is obviously totally fine. I'm basically trying to bolster our collection however I can. I view it as a great shame that so many libraries have such competitively small collections of fantasy maps. Mapping of imaginary places has historically never really been on many peoples radar in terms of things that we should keep, catalogue and store. With all that said this is ultimately a case of "if you don't ask you don't get" and I'm writing all this with the full understanding that nothing may come of it (and I'm totally fine with that). Though I would encourage anyone out there who goes on to publish any work to always consider depositing a copy within your local university library collection if possible.

The other main reason I bring this all up is as an attempt to get those of you who may be interested to consider banding together to produce a compendium of the best work produced here. It seems a shame that so many of you have produced such amazing work that will never find its way into a hard format. As someone who handles many many maps every day I can assure you there is nothing like having a world (real or imaginary) roll out before you in a tangible physical form. Even if you only make copies for yourselves I encourage you to always think of printing your finest pieces professionally.

Maps on the screen show you the fantasy they represent, but once you hold a map in your hand there is no telling where it may take you.

sounds like a good idea.
What i do dose not transition to printed paper well so..............

3d space and printed paper do not mix well

That is totally understandable, not all work translates to a printed format. With that said however you will also be surprised by how well a number of images can capture your work, if the shots themselves are chosen with such a goal in mind.

So Click got in touch with me and came up with an interesting idea. If I could get high res digital copies of your works I could do the printing myself and add them to our collection. I will also need a certain number of details to catalogue an item to a basic level...

Title of work
Authors name
Year of publication (or creation in this case)
Setting *

*: I'm thinking it may be useful to know if a map is from a series of unified works, so if the map pertains to a specific world/setting I think that would be (Middle Earth, for example).

I will probably want to print items at A3 or A2 size (depending on the item in question). I would then fold them so they can be stored in our standard size boxes (which support items a little larger than A4 size). Obviously I would love to store everything as a roll map, but that is just not feasible.

The works would be catalogued under the series title of "Cartographers Guild" in the first instance and will begin life stored on an access database. Later an initiative would take place to catalogue each item more fully (making it searchable via the libraries main search engine).

While I would love to take a copy of everything people here have produced I will probably have to assert some form of quality control, which I hope you can all understand. I will also be focusing on maps of worlds, continents, islands, cities or towns (probably in that order). Maps of smaller areas like dungeons, castles or other such things would be much lower priority, though I may make exception if the quality or style of the work was very high or unique. I will probably also focus upon maps of places outside existing intellectual properties (like the lord of the rings) as we likely already have maps of those places that have been produced and published for the market.

I should also reiterate that the purpose of this entire thing is not to take any forms of rights from you. Its simply an effort to store examples of such works in a physical archive.

I will probably start sending people PMs asking if they are happy to contribute their work, requesting high res images that I can print from. If your interested in the idea please feel free to contact me.

Also I'm sorry for spamming the main forums with three posts in a row!

[Wingshaw]

Hi Kanny. Welcome to the Guild.

Congratulations on this great idea. I wish maps were taken more seriously, and considered more as works of art.

Two quick questions:
--When you mention preferred sizes of A3 or A2, does that include considerations of legibility for detailed work? As someone who works in a library, perhaps you know that small text can still be read at those scales
--This may be obvious, but when you mention Author, I presume you mean artist/cartographer. It just might be confusing for commissioned works. And will you include something about creation method as well, or do you prefer just setting?

I have also responded to your PM.

THW

[Kanny]

Hi Kanny. Welcome to the Guild.

Congratulations on this great idea. I wish maps were taken more seriously, and considered more as works of art.

Two quick questions:
--When you mention preferred sizes of A3 or A2, does that include considerations of legibility for detailed work? As someone who works in a library, perhaps you know that small text can still be read at those scales
--This may be obvious, but when you mention Author, I presume you mean artist/cartographer. It just might be confusing for commissioned works. And will you include something about creation method as well, or do you prefer just setting?

I have also responded to your PM.

THW

Hiya thanks for your reply, so the sizes I listed as A2 and A3 are mainly going to be down to my own personal budget, obviously if anyone wanted to donate a work printed larger that's fine (wonderful in fact) but I think these will be the limits of what I'm personally willing to fund. Librarianship is not a get rich kind of job. The other main reason is to avoid anything smaller than A3, which apart from in very specific situations will probably not be adequate to show the detail of a work.

By author I mean you, the creator of the work (not any fictional character you may have constructed to be responsible for its creation).

The creation method while interesting is probably a level of detail I don't need. These will be quite basic catalogue records after all, please bare in mind that I have a full time job dealing with real world mapping, which we receive in abundance every day (as a result of the legal deposit act of 2003), so this project will in no way be where I'm spending most my working day and I have to therefore be realistic.

Finally thank you so much for your time and consideration.

[J.Edward]

I do hope no offense is taken here as none is intended. That being said...
Now that the discussion has moved to the sending of high resolution files for printing, I felt it would be prudent to ask if there is some way that you would be able to verify for us that you do indeed work at the Cambridge Library and that the files sent would only be used for that purpose. Is there some standard form of agreement for such things?
I would hope you would understand the need. I doubt many of us are in the habit of sending high rez files to total strangers.
It would also seem relevant to put up the address for any physical maps to be sent to.

[Kanny]

Of course, I probably should have made an account here on the forums with my name rather than my internet handle (old habits).

Anyway, my name is Ian Pittock and I'm an Assistant Librarian in the Map Room. You can find me listed at the bottom of this page: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/maps/contact.html

If you would like my work e-mail address please PM me.

You can also phone any of the contact details given on that webpage and enquire about my employment at the UL if you wish.

Best wishes,

Ian

[J.Edward]

That is gracious of you Ian. I think you could probably hide the work email.
Maybe you could say 'work email upon request - send pm to Kanny' or something like that.
I'm not familiar with UK post addresses, is the one in the Lib. contact the address that any print work would be sent to?
And if so, how would it need to be addressed so that it reaches the appropriate person, ie you.

[Azélor]

This is a wonderful initiative!