I think there are some ISO standards for cataloging, and specifically cataloging maps. Also, I would recommend contacting the Library of Congress about how they do it.

Go to the local library and ask for specific info about how they (the local library) and the Library of Congress catalog and describe maps. It is a craft! You seem to want to do it right, so find out how the pros do it.
(I am a career mapmaker - since 1966.)

You might have a look at Barbara Farrell and Aileen Desbarats, Guide for a Small Map Collection, 2nd ed., Ottawa: Association of Canadian Map Libraries, 1984. The last chapter briefly covers map cataloguing. For a more indepth look at the cataloguing standards used by most map libraries in the English-speaking world see Hugo Stibbe, Cartographic Materials: A Manual of Interpretation for AACR2, Ottawa: Canadian Library Association, 1982.

Good luck!

You might want to look at a system we have developed at the Huntington Library and extended to three other small libraries and historical Societies in Southern California. One of the first things you need to decide is who you are cataloging for. If it’s librarians, you will want to use MARC language. Ours is written in English because the audience we wanted to reach initially were researchers who don’t read code. You can see it on the California Map Society website, www.californiamapsociety.org. Simply follow the links to Union Catalog. The steps to get there include promising your first born if you use this commercially and are there to protect the rights of the holders. The program is written in FileMaker Pro, a program a nonprofit can purchase for $165 at last checking. There are 65 possible fields for describing a map in this format. The work of cataloguing was all done by volunteers, no real staff time required. The same program is being used at Cal State Fullerton to catalogue the Roy V. Boswell collection, an important archive of map scholarship which has been largely inaccessable to researchers.
Now the best part. The templates for cataloguing are owned by the Huntington Library. They will furnish any nonprofit organization a copy of the templates at no charge. At least the price is right. I’ll be happy to supply more information to any interested parties. One caveat, the images associated with these records on the website had to be degraded because of the space available on the web server we use at the Huntington. The images cannot be blown up as far as the originals. All map images were made with a hand held Nikon Coolpix 950 with only 2 MM pixels. Currenty there are over 3000 maps and 10,000 images on that website, searchable several ways, but totally searchable in any field (cartographer, area mapped, date, publisher, current GM coordinates, and 60 other fields)on a computer loaded with the program.
Bill Warren, volunteer Printed Map Cataloguer, Huntington Library, for the last 5 years.

I’m not an archivist, but I spend a lot of time at libraries looking for old maps. Pretty much the standard method of cataloging maps at public libraries is to throw them in a flat file drawer in no particular order :)

Seriously though, you should try to figure out a way to scan them at as high of resolution as you can (600 dpi). Then catalog them online. You might even be able to add them to an existing online database, such as http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/. Not sure what city/country you are in, but there might already be an existing online map collection that you could team up with nearby.

Matt

Unfortunately it’s true that the standard method of cataloging is just to pile them in a drawer. I guess the reason for it is poor demand for those issues.