National and regional atlases for 1968-1971: sources, bibliography, articles

Summary

This bibliographical volume, prepared by the Institute of Geography of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the Twenty-Second International Geographical Congress in Warsaw in 1972, documents national and regional atlases published during 1968–1971 and related cartographic scholarship. It continues a systematic programme initiated after the 1958 meeting of the International Geographical Union’s Committee of National Atlases. An initial bibliography, issued for the 1960 Stockholm Congress, recorded 130 atlases from 1900–1959, although only about thirty percent fully satisfied the criteria proposed for national atlases. A substantially expanded edition prepared for the 1964 London Congress covered 361 national, regional, and transnational atlases published through 1962, while a later supplement listed 191 works issued between 1963 and 1967. The present publication extends this cumulative record by identifying 205 items, including new atlases, continuations, revised editions, and successive instalments of earlier projects. Its evidence derives principally from the cartographic collections of the Institute of Geography and from international geographical, cartographical, bibliographical, and reviewing periodicals. Specialists, including K. A. Salischev and A. V. Vostokova for Soviet materials and A. Gerlach for the United States, assisted in checking and correcting selected national entries. The volume is divided into three complementary sections: a register of sources; a bibliography of atlases accompanied, where available, by reviews; and a bibliography of scholarly articles concerning atlas conception, compilation, design, and use. Atlas entries are organized geographically by continent and country, arranged alphabetically within national sections, with national atlases preceding regional or specialized works. Coverage extends across Europe, Africa, North, Central, and South America, Asia, Australia and Oceania, the Pacific islands, and Antarctica, together with works addressing larger continental areas. The articles reveal major concerns in contemporary thematic and complex atlas cartography: the definition and structure of national atlases; coordination of map series; graphic design and layout; explanatory texts; and the representation of geomorphology, vegetation, hydrology, permafrost, population, settlement, agriculture, mineral and energy resources, industry, construction, and environmental conditions. Particular attention is given to Soviet and Eastern European experience in comprehensive scientific-reference atlases and evaluative small-scale mapping for regional planning and resource management. Overall, the publication functions both as an international reference tool and as a record of the rapid geographical expansion, thematic diversification, and methodological development of national and regional atlas production at the turn of the 1970s.