Finding topographic maps on the 3rd floor (Irvine Map Collection)

I just had a primer from Bill on locating maps in our library collection.

As many of you know, not all of our maps are cataloged. This is true for a lot of topographic maps (topo for short) in the Irvine room. We generally have these uncataloged maps in alphabetic order by geographic location. The broader level is by state. We only have them for 3 states: California, Arizona and Nevada.

If you are looking for a topo map for an area in California, for instance, sometimes the area you need might not be in the quadrangle map (quad for short) that is labeled as the location needed.

Example: I am helping an MSGIS student look for a topo map of Joshua Tree National Park, but the one he found on his own (appropriately labeled Joshua Tree) did not have the land features and areas he needed. As far as he is concerned the area of interest was off the quad he found. So, what to do?

The quad maps themselves have area markers at each corner and side of the quad. These help if you are looking for adjacent areas, but if they aren't adjacent, indices will help. These indices are located in the first drawer of each of the (uncataloged) map collection for each state. The indices are big maps or map pamphlets/books of the state chunked into different quads that correspond to the different quad maps we have in the drawers. The names of each quad map are in the index, so that's a good way to figure out which map name you should be looking for. Also, be aware of the date on the map. The later maps will be a better match to the map index.

That's what I learned today! Pretty cool!

~Melissa