Bending the rules: Creatively adapting library systems to automate the map collection

Map collectors have struggled to establish and maintain efficient storage and retrieval methods for large map series. The U.S. Geological Survey's series of 7.5 minute topographic quadrangles is a particularly compelling case. Organizing and accessing a scries comprised of more than 57, 000 individual current sheets, and countless historic editions, is a monumental task. Even with the incorporation of computer technology, the maintenance of this widely used set has remained something of a problem in many collections. At the Pennsylvania State University Libraries' map collection we have utilized the Innovacq Serials Control System, a subset of the Innopac computer catalog program, to automate acquisitions and historic holdings of this unwieldy series. Innovacq allows us to record both sheet level and edition information, potentially for all large map sets. The paper discusses the arrangement of the online catalog and check-in records created for the project, overall system functions, and personnel requirements.