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The Ohio State University - future plans

By Daniel Dotson and Joshua Sadvari


At Ohio State, our map collections include more than 175,000 geologic, topographic, and thematic maps distributed across our Geology Library, Gardner Family Map Room, Architecture Library, Special Collections, and more. While we have not yet contributed scanned maps to the geoportal, our participation in the project has been of great benefit to us in identifying potential collections for digitization and discussing effective map scanning workflows with our peers. We look forward to contributing scanned maps from our collections in the future. Ohio State is looking at a few options for adding scanned map content. Click the links to view the print records from the OSU Library Catalog. We have three main categories:

Public domain maps, not digitized elsewhere

We have a number of maps in our collections that are public domain. Some of these are in patron-accessible collections, while others are in our Special Collections units. These items would be checked for online availability and scanned if not available online.

State-produced maps

These are items produced by stage agencies. Ohio state government information is copyrighted, so we need permission for anything not in the public comain. We are currently in discussion with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) to see if we can get permission for all agencies that fall under ODNR or were predecessor agencies to units falling under ODNR (department names change, merge, go away, etc.).

Ohio State produced maps

Many of these are in our University Archives and some are already digitized. We would need to work closely with that unit and the other units that have produced maps over the year to make content available.