Capture and Release: The Story of the Russian Military Topographic Map Collection

Abstract

The map collection of the Herman B. Wells Library at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington contains approx-imately 400,000 sheet maps covering nearly every country in the world. While the state of Indiana is a major focus of the collection, it also has strengths in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In particular, the Russian Military Topographic Map Collection is of great value to IU’s reputable Russian and East European Institute, and its Central Eurasian Studies program. As a result, the IU Libraries were awarded a Council of Information and Library Resources (CLIR) Hidden Collections grant in 2018 to fund the digitization of this collection.