Within the framework of the DFG funded project GeoPortOst the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in cooperation with the Chair of Southeast and East European History of the University of Regensburg invites paper proposals for the workshop “Maps in Libraries 2019” to be held in Regensburg (Germany) on 13 and 14 March 2019.

The advancing digitization of library holdings allows easier access to resources that were previously poorly represented by the traditional catalogue. This also includes map collections: In digital environments, they are searchable beyond verbal indexing. Crucial for this is adding geographical coordinates as new values to the map metadata (via georeferencing). With the help of coordinates not only the retrieval of cartographic documents can be improved by visual geosearch systems, they can also be linked to other information – outside of the catalogue.

Meanwhile we look back on about 15 years of mass georeferencing in libraries. Various applications have been established to unlock map content with public participation (e.g. the Georeferencer by Klokan Technologies or the Map Warper by Tim Waters) and make it available in portals.

The workshop “Maps in Libraries” provides a forum to discuss the results and perspectives of these developments. How is the response to new access points to map content? How are the data used – and do we even know about it? How are map documents found in a diversified landscape of portals and digital libraries? Who belongs to the target group of these new services – and is there one at all?
We welcome papers from map librarians, curators, information scientists, but also scholars from other fields who use, create or research maps. We encourage young librarians and graduate students (LIS, DH, geoinformatics) to send applications.

Relevant topics are (but not restricted to) the following:
– Development and management of digital map libraries and portals
– Experiences and best practices in georeferencing and enhancing digitized map collections
– New solutions for retrieval
– Concerns and desiderata of the users
– Public Participation and Open Science
– Integrating and working with authority files, metadata, and wikidata
– Persistence and documentation of geodata from georeferencing projects (research data)
– Library and GIS: Applications and services for analysis and visualization.

Reasonable travel costs will be covered and accommodation will be arranged. We anticipate the publication of the contributions in an edited volume.

Please submit your application online via the IOS application portal at https://www.ios-regensburg.de/en/calls/online-application-form/geoportost-workshop.html including an abstract of the paper proposal (up to 300 words) and a short biographic statement (up to 100 words) plus your name and institutional affiliation by 15 December 2018. We strongly prefer documents in pdf format. Applications via email will not be accepted. Selected authors will be notified of the acceptance of their proposals by 15 January 2019.
If you have any questions about the topics and the course of the workshop, please contact us: geoportost@ios-regensburg.de.

The workshop will be followed by a User Group Meeting for libraries implementing the Klokan Technologies‘ georeferencer on 14 March 2019.
The aim of the meeting is a general exchange of experiences. In addition, however, we also want to encourage the audience to formulate questions and objectives that can contribute to the further development of georeferencing applications.