Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
167 maps were published between 1933 and 1949 using nine different
printers, with consequent variations in the inks used. A further 56 maps
showing upland Scotland were very carefully colored using watercolor
paints and deposited with the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) library
in London.
Our first problem was establishing who owned copyright in the
maps. The Ordnance Survey base maps had clearly been in Crown Copy-
right, but this lasts for only fifty years. An initial assumption was that the
LSE owned some rights, but in 1936 it made Stamp sign an agreement
taking full personal responsibility for the LUSGB. He was a very suc-
cessful author of geography textbooks, so his personal resources were
significant, and he established and owned a company, Geographical
Publications Ltd., that published the maps. It is absolutely clear that
Stamp was the principal author of the maps, and copyright therefore
runs for seventy years from his death in 1966. He left the company to a
member of his team, with whom we have established contact. She and
her son have been enormously supportive of our work.
A second problem was assembling and scanning a complete set of
good quality copies of the maps: our university had some, the Environ-
ment Agency bought a significant number from a dealer, and the LSE was
able to sell us some mint-condition maps from unsold stock. However,
the most important sources were other university map libraries, which
freely lent us maps from their collections for scanning. Similarly, we
were eventually able to include the unpublished maps of upland Scot-
land at minimal cost: a commercial republisher of historical maps was
scanning a large number of other maps at the Royal Geographical So-
ciety and did the LUSGB maps for us, while the RGS also imposed no
charge.
Once all the maps had been scanned by ourselves or our partners,
georeferencing and the construction of a seamless mosaic were time-
consuming but straightforward. The only real complication was that the
georeferencing had to be done without using modern Ordnance Survey
(OS) copyright data, as otherwise the OS would have been able to claim
rights in the final product. However, our collection already included a
digital version of the late 1940s New Popular Edition of one-inch maps,
which was the first edition to include the modern National Grid, making
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