Lithuanian National Atlases

Summary

The authors recount the development of atlas-making at Vilnius University after World War II, including V. Chomskis’s role in restoring cartographic training, establishing the Cartography Laboratory in 1966, and supervising map originals for the 1981 Atlas of the Lithuanian SSR, called the Atlas of Lithuania in the article. Published in Minsk in Lithuanian and Russian with a circulation of 10,000, the atlas involved 187 institutional and independent experts. Its 18 chapters comprise an introduction, ten chapters on natural conditions and their evaluation, and seven on population, economic and social life, and history. Soviet restrictions limited historical mapping and confined purchase and use to institutions. To provide an atlas for public readership, the laboratory compiled another atlas in 1983–1988 with 175 experts, 245 maps, and 176 pages; it was still in production when the article was written. The authors also report completed map originals for a historical atlas, ongoing school and tourist mapping, and the laboratory’s merger with the Photogrammetry Laboratory into the Centre of Cartography. They outline plans for GIS-based thematic and general mapping and digital data services.