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1. Introduction
Descriptions of maps have been collected for centuries. In the beginning, they were paper catalogues (Andrew and Larsgaard, 1999) and the data referred to paper maps. In the 1990s, many cartographic collections were digitised. For example, in the mid-1990s, maps were scanned and made available on CDs at the Malpass Library at Western Illinois University (Allen, 2008). At the same time, the technology required for geographic information systems (GIS) was developing rapidly (March and Scarletto, 2017). In the US, the Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) GIS Literacy Project was launched (Davie et al., 1999), which enabled ARL member libraries to create GIS services within their libraries. An early example of integrating GIS into non-geographic subject areas advised business liaisons to encourage GIS technology to complement other data sources and analyses (Norris and Tenner, 2000). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, digital libraries were considering how to store map scans: whether they should be colour or monochrome, what the scanning resolution should be and what the costs of storing maps using various techniques were (Bidney, 2019).
Nowadays, many large and small libraries, archives and museums have put their rapidly growing collections of digital content online, creating an immense wealth of scholarly and cultural information. Currently, there is a dynamic development of digital humanities. Digital humanities can be defined as new ways of doing research that involve collaborative, transdisciplinary and computationally engaged research, teaching and publishing. They bring digital tools and methods to the study of the humanities with the recognition that the printed word is no longer the main medium for knowledge production and distribution (Burdick et al., 2012).
Margaritopoulos et al. (2012), Neumaier et al. (2016) and Stvilia and Gasser (2008) emphasised that end users and providers have different needs related to the description of objects in digital libraries. It could be that end users are mostly interested in descriptive metadata, whereas providers may use additional kinds of metadata, such as administrative metadata, to maintain the collection.
Description of metadata for objects stored in libraries, museums, or archives is very well known and widespread. Metadata schemas were developed, such as the MARC standard (for MAchine Readable Cataloguing) for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form...