Besides being a place of study, New York Public Library, located in Manhattan at 42^nd Street between 5^th and 6^th Avenues also represents a touristic objective. This summer, I visited this place with my family as the building represents a great architectural attraction. It was a really impressive visit and I am looking forward to go there again tomorrow for a second visit.

Our tomorrow’s objective is to study the map collection from 10 am to 12:30pm. I am very eager to see some of them, as there is impossible to see the whole collection in such a short time. According to Knutzen, (2013) the collection includes 433,000 sheet maps. A better way to study more maps would be viewing them in a digitalized form.

In “Unbinding the Atlas: Moving the NYPL Map Collection beyond Digitization,” the author informs us that the process of digitalization was started in 2000. The purpose of digitalization was to grant access at the global level to the map. (Knutzen, 2013) On line availability of maps was done through a long and complicated process. It was a combined effort of map librarians, GIS professionals, and other experts.

I am looking forward to enrich my knowledge with the map collection. I also hope that we will get a quick overview on accessing maps in the electronic version. Although there will be an extremely short time for our visit, I expect to learn more about this library, the sources it has and how to access them.

Reference:

1. Knutzen, M. m. (2013). Unbinding the Atlas: Moving the NYPL Map Collection Beyond Digitization. Journal Of Map & Geography Libraries, 9(1/2), 8-24.