National Map Reading Week is an awareness campaign originally created by Jonathan Elder of the

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

, Britain's

National Mapping Agency A national mapping agency (NMA) is an organisation, usually publicly owned, that produces topographic maps and geographic information of a country. Some national mapping agencies also deal with cadastral matters. According to 2007/2/EC European ...

. It runs annually in the third week of October. The goal of the awareness week is to increase public use of maps and mapping services. This followed a public survey that demonstrated many British residents were unable to accurately place key cities on a map, including London and Birmingham. The worry over loss of skills is not a new one: research by the British Library shows concerns were expressed by historian and cartographer John Brian Hartley over the loss of traditional map skills as digital mapping was developed in the 1980s.

References

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External links

Royal Institute of Navigation: National Map Reading WeekSouth Downs National Park: National Map Reading Week 17 – 23 October 2016Rohan: National Map Reading Week 17 – 23 October 2016Devon Geography: Map Reading Week Is Coming!Azimap: National Map Reading WeekOhio State University: National Map Reading Week in the UKOutdoor Industry Association newsletter Sep 2016 – National Map Reading Week
Ordnance Survey Awareness weeks