Atlases. A school of co-creation

Summary

The supplied opening and closing sections recount collaborative organization and technological change in Soviet and Russian atlas production. The opening describes the World Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources, intended to assess global snow and ice reserves, their regimes and variability, and potential uses. Formally proposed in 1973 and approved by the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1975, with international support, the completed atlas contains more than 1,000 maps in 17 thematic sections across 400 pages. Nearly 300 participants worked under a common programme involving approximately 30 institutions; 240 authors contributed maps. The authors emphasize the roles of geographical atlas-making traditions, centralized research organization, and participant enthusiasm, detailing how editorial regulations, map review, glaciological meetings, and specialist publications supported collaboration. The closing discusses A. A. Lyuty’s theory of map language and its reception, alongside financial difficulties and laboratory staff changes in the 1990s. It then describes the GIS atlas Our Earth, developed from continental maps excluded from the ПСЕРМ atlas. Work began in 1993 through cooperation between the cartography laboratory and Data+, with ESRI technical and financial support, using ArcInfo and ArcView. Production involved digitization, editing, coordination of maps, and preparation of English texts; the atlas was first presented at the International Cartographic Conference in Stockholm in 1997. The account states that more than 25 years of work on ПСЕРМ ultimately yielded a printed atlas and a GIS atlas completed in under five years. It also links the shorter production schedules of subsequent Russian comprehensive atlases to close teamwork and the full adoption of computer-based cartographic technologies around the turn of the century.