A catalogue of manuscript and printed reports, field books, memoirs, maps, etc., of the Indian Surveys, deposited in the map room of the India office
Name
India_Office_1878_Map_Catalogue.pdf
Description
visibility:open
Size
47.58 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (CRC64NVME)
Gdz+c5Xh1e8=
Resource type
Book
Creator (person)
Markham, Clements
Date published
1878
Abstract
A catalogue of manuscript and printed reports, field books, memoirs, maps, etc., of the Indian Surveys, deposited in the map room of the India office is the published listing of the holdings of the map collection of the India Office, the working archive used for the administration of India from London between 1600 and 1947. The collection also preserved record copies of current published mapping of the Indian Survey, for which it functioned as its sales office. The catalogue was compiled by Sir Clements Markham (1830-1916) who had established the geographical department in the India Office 1867 and did much to improve the collection’s arrangement and preservation (described in his Memoir on the Indian surveys… 1871). Published in two parts, the catalogue includes a contents page and an index. The latter greatly enhances its usability as a finding aid. This copy of the catalogue was used in the reading room of the India Office records at Orbit House, Blackfriars from the 1970s. It has been altered and annotated in a number of ways to reflect changes that were made to the contents and arrangement of the collection after 1878. The most important of these changes are i) Crossings out of material no longer present in the collection. This includes surveys, field books and material relating to the Great Trigonometrical Survey which was sent to the Survey of India in 1924, and large scale maps and plans for infrastructure projects sent to Indian provincial public works departments. ii) The addition of ‘X’ numbers for all items in the collection, the current referencing system that replaced the alpha-numeric system (including A.C = Atlas cupboard) in the late 1960s. The original tranche of material listed in the catalogue has the number range X/1 to X/4999. iii) Written and typed annotations and inserted leaves listing maps that were added to the collection after 1878. These received the following numbers: X/9000 to 10999 for post-1878 but pre-1947 additions to the collection; X/11000 to 119999 for maps identified as having been added to the collection before 1947 but not formally accessioned (X/5000 to 8999 were for maps added to the collection between 1878 and 1947 but subsequently discarded); X/12000 to X/12999 for maps known to belong to the India Office map collection but only transferred to it after 1947. The catalogue does not include maps accessioned between 1947 and 1973 (X/13000 to X/13999) and after 1974 (X/14000 onwards).
How to use this catalogue for locating and ordering items to the British Library’s reading rooms: For the ordering of original material to view onsite in reading rooms, the key piece of information contained in this catalogue is the ‘X’ number for each unit. These can be entered into the ‘request other items’ page of Explore the British Library under the Asia, Pacific and Africa collection subset, with the option to view originals in either the A&AS or Maps Reading Room.
Users should be aware that there may be instances of terminology in the catalogue that would not be deemed acceptable in the present day.
Contributor (organisation)
India Office
Publisher
W.H. Allen & Co.
Place of publication
London, UK
Official URL
Additional information
(C) Crown Copyright