Establishing a Land Surveying Digital Map Library: Review of Process and Technologies Created and Leveraged

The Special Collections and Archives Department in the Mary and Jeff Bell Library at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi contains nine land surveying map collections. These map collections contain tens of thousands of land surveying maps and documents of Corpus Christi, Nueces County, and the surrounding Texas region from the late 19th century to the late 20th century. These historic map collections are currently only available to in-person library visitors, restricting the availability of these maps to only those who are able to travel to Corpus Christi. The Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science (CBI), in collaboration with the Mary and Jeff Bell Library, is scanning these map collections so an online digital map library can be established. Currently, over 66,000 items have been scanned and cataloged from two of the nine map collections.

During the course of scanning and cataloging the map collections, we have developed scanning and cataloging procedures, an automatic scan cropping application, a web-based cataloging system (BandoCat), a web-based document transcription system, and a web-based map georectification system. To publish the map collection to the public, we have chosen DSpace, hosted by the Texas Digital Library, as our publishing platform. We have utilized the DSpace REST API to create a custom solution that allows us to publish directly from within our cataloging system.

The focus of this presentation will be a review of the recent progress on the project up to its current status. The review will cover our scanning procedures, cataloging procedures, use of DSpace REST API for publishing documents, and our cataloging, transcription, and georectification software. The presentation will be a mix of high-level discussion, system demonstration, and technical explanation.