Special Interest Groups
Groups of members who have a particular area of interest
BCS membership covers a vast array of topics and interests. Groups of members who want to focus on a particular area can set up Special Interest Groups (SIGs), which may continue indefinitely or just exist for a short time. All members can join a SIG or can propose to BCS Council the setting up of a new SIG.
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The BCS currently has two SIGs.
Historical Military Mapping Group (HMMG)
This group is a forum for discussion for those interested in or engaged in research into any aspect of the history of military survey and mapping. There is a particular focus on 19th and 20th century military survey and mapping.
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The HMMG liaises closely with the Defence Surveyors Association (DSA) and as a member you would have a standing invitation to attend the DSA’s seminars in June and November.
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We aim to offer regular talks and visits to members of the group. Previous events have included a trip to the battlefields of France, RAF Northolt and a tour of Cambridge University Library.
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To join the HMMG, you can change your details on the membership database and click on the appropriate box.
Convener: John Peaty
Maps and Surveys, the online Newsletter of the Historical Military Mapping Group (editor: Paul Hesp), welcomes contributions from members and non-members – short articles on any aspect of the history of military survey and mapping, exchanges of opinion, items for the notice board: conference announcements and other group activities, new publications or websites, etc. For further details see Maps and Surveys under Publications.​
Map Curators' Group (MCG)
This group is for anyone interested in using and sharing map collections. Founded in 1966, the group’s members include librarians, archivists, curators, map historians and map collectors. Bound together by a shared interest in curating, maintaining and sharing our map collections, we welcome new members and new ideas.
Themed annual workshops offer the opportunity to share expertise and learn from each other, and are often accompanied by visits to map collections. We run specialist training events to encourage and support newcomers to the map community. We also maintain the popular Directory of UK Map Collections and the Map Curators’ Toolbox, an online source of information for map curators, librarians and archivists, which can be accessed from the GeoViz Resource Centre.​​
​Our digital newsletter Cartographiti is published twice each year and includes papers from our workshops and relevant updates and news. For more details see Cartographiti under Publications.
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​The Map Curators' Group is a member of BRICMICS.
​Conveners: Martin Davis and Debbie Hall​
Map Curators’ Group 60th Anniversary Workshop
The Map Curators’ Group will celebrate its 60th anniversary by hosting a workshop at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) in Edinburgh on Tuesday 8th September, from 10am until 5.30pm.
The morning session will see the group visit the Map Library in the Causewayside building, where there will be opportunity to tour the library facilities, view a collection of early maps of Scotland, and hear about recent work at the library, including its events and digitisation. After a lunch break, we will reconvene at the main NLS building on George IV Bridge for a series of talks. Among these will be a talk in memory of the former long-serving MCG convenor, Ann Sutherland. Ann was a keen advocate of international cooperation within the map library profession, and we hope that this will be the first time of many that we will be able to invite an overseas speaker to an MCG event in this way.
Our inaugural Ann Sutherland Lecture will be given by Marcy Bidney; Assistant University Librarian for Distinctive Collections at the University of Chicago in the United States. Marcy is also chair of the worldwide Map and Geospatial Information Curators Group (MAGIC), and her talk will reflect on Ann Sutherland’s legacy of internationalism, exploring how cross-border collaboration continues to shape professional identity in our field.
The Map Curators Group is open to anyone interested in the preservation, dissemination and use of maps in libraries and archives, and we hope that you will be able to join us for this exciting workshop as we mark our 60th anniversary.