The atlas of the Netherlands

Summary

THE NATIONAL ATLAS OF THE NETHERLANDS. Towards the end of 1963 the first sheets of the national atlas of The Netherlands will appear. The present paper first gives a short review of national atlases in other countries and of the I.G.U.-Commission on National Atlases. In The Netherlands, a commission was appointed for the preparation of a national atlas as early as in 1932, but not until 1951 was a foundation for a national atlas jointly established by the Ministry of Education, the Royal Netherlands Geographical Society, and the Society for Economic and Social Geography. Since 1959, this foundation has received a considerable grant from public funds, so that publication is now assured. The organization consists of: (a) a Board of Trustees, in which various ministries, government agencies, and geographic societies are represented; (b) an Editorial Committee of 7 members, mostly geographers, which decides the contents of the atlas as a whole and that of the individual maps; (c) 17 Subcommissions, one for each chapter of the atlas, most of the members being from government agencies and universities; these sub-commissions do the actual work of compiling the maps; (d) a Bureau, in which 3 draughtsmen, led by a geographer-cartographer, redraw the maps so that they will be suitable for reproduction. The Head of this Bureau advises the sub-commissions on cartographic matters, and acts as a centre for the whole organization. The colour printing is in the hands of the Topographical Survey, the letter-printing and distribution are done by the Government Printing and Publishing Office. About 10 sheets will be published each year, to be collected in a binder; the complete atlas will contain 109 sheets. Most of the sheets bear explanatory texts in Dutch and English on the reverse side of the maps. The scale of the main maps is 1:600 000. This is not in agreement with the recommendations of the I.G.U.-Commission, but use of the recommended scale of 1:500 000 would have made the atlas too large to handle. The contents, which are given in English below, conform in general to the recommendations of the I.G.U.-Commission, although there are many modifications owing to local conditions. No maps are needed, for instance, on volcanism or illiteracy, but the situation requires many on water control and the protection against the sea. A special feature is the insertion of a soil map in 9 sheets, which is also being published separately by the Soil Survey Institute. The great demand for the atlas (more than 6500 subscribers to date, which is four times as many as expected) has caused some delay in the publication of the first issue.