In recent years, the value of print map collections around the world has come into question resulting in the closure and consolidation of many map libraries and their collections (Keller 2001; Andrew and Weimer 2016). The justification for these closures is often that “print maps are no longer relevant in a digital world.” In this editorial, we (Marcy and Nathan) take this opportunity to introduce ourselves to the readership of the Taylor & Francis Journal of Map & Geography Libraries (hereafter “JMGL”), by outlining four major ways we feel that map libraries and the print cartographic collections that they preserve remain relevant and irreplaceable even in a digital world. There are likely other ways that map libraries and their collections remain relevant today and we invite you, the authors and readers of this journal, to contribute your own ideas and writing on the topic in future issues. In our view, there is a dearth of formal writing and scholarship in response to map library closures and if not in this journal, then where would one look for sound reasoning and justification to keep them open? The Oxford English Dictionary defines a map as a “drawing or other representation of the earth’s surface or a part of it made on a flat surface, showing the distribution of physical or geographic features (and often also including socio-economic, political, agricultural, meteorological, etc. information), with each point in the representation corresponding to an actual geographical position according to a fixed scale or projection; a similar representation of the positions of the stars in the sky, the surface of the planet, or the like.” For the purposes of this editorial, we refer to “maps” generically to also include the other print cartographic resources often housed in map libraries like atlases, globes, historic aerial photographs, and others. Print maps (and other print cartographic resources) are often the authoritative geographic and scientific documents of their time, accurately

中文翻译：

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捍卫地图库

近年来，世界各地印刷地图收藏的价值受到质疑，导致许多地图图书馆及其收藏的关闭和合并（Keller 2001； Andrew and Weimer 2016）。这些封闭的理由通常是“印刷地图在数字世界中不再相关”。在这篇社论中，我们（Marcy和Nathan）借此机会向我们介绍了泰勒和弗朗西斯《地图与地理图书馆杂志》（以下简称“ JMGL”）的读者群，概述了我们认为地图库和印刷品的四种主要方式他们保存的制图馆藏即使在数字世界中也仍然是相关且不可替代的。如今，地图库及其馆藏可能还有其他相关方式，我们邀请您，本期刊的作者和读者，在以后的问题中发表自己的想法并就该主题撰写文章。我们认为，由于地图图书馆的关闭，缺乏正式的写作和学术研究，如果没有在本期刊中发表，那么人们会在哪里寻找合理的理由和理由来保持开放？牛津英语词典将地图定义为“地球表面或其一部分在平面上绘制的图形或其他表示形式，显示了自然或地理特征的分布（通常还包括社会经济，政治，农业，气象等信息），表示中的每个点都根据固定的比例尺或投影与实际地理位置相对应；天空，行星表面等中恒星位置的相似表示。”出于本社论的目的，我们通常将“地图”也包括在地图库中，例如地图集，地球仪，历史航空照片等中所包含的其他印刷制图资源。印刷地图（和其他印刷制图资源）通常是其时间的准确地理和科学文献