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reflects the influence of specifically national circumstances, which ulti-
mately have a decisive impact on map design.
One possible explanation is that national mapping organizations with
greater human and financial resources at their disposal are more likely to
produce maps with more extensive 'vocabularies' at a given scale, not
least because a broader symbology for paper maps requires more effort and
skill to devise, produce, and sustain. However, testing associations be-
tween the total number of symbols in the symbology and internal factors
that could feasibly affect the operational characteristics of national map-
ping organizations such as the number of staff, annual budget, degree of
state funding, and annual sales, revealed no significant correlation.
The findings of this investigation perhaps also suggest that as 'mirrors of
society', state topographic maps cannot be claimed to exhibit any more ve-
racity than as 'mirrors of nature'. If the information topographic maps con-
tain is strongly influenced by what is
perceived
as being of value to a
range of prospective users (Keates 1989, pp.148-149), maintaining this
particular selection of features also serves the interests of those with the
power to initiate changes to their design. State topographic maps are tradi-
tionally conservative in this respect and NMOs tend to retain a particular
choice of features which they would justify as comprising the most useful,
i.e., having the highest number of potential functions (or the highest sig-
nificance), to the greatest number of users over time. A comparison with
another geographical region (perhaps involving post-colonial countries)
would perhaps serve to highlight the extent to which this is the case or,
conversely, the extent to which current state topographic mapping falls
short of meeting the needs of users in symbolizing the national landscape.
References
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European Commission (2006) Special Eurobarometer 243: Europeans and Their Languages.
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb_special_en.htm. Accessed 12 October 2010
Hinton PR (2004) Statistics Explained. (2nd ed) Routledge, Hove
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