A follow-up article by Val Ross in today’s Globe and Mail about Library and Archives Canada’s attempt to bid on a copy of a map they already owned ascribes it to a lack of corporate memory and staff knowledge:

“The Forlani in the national archives was a map that was well known,” says Conrad Heidenreich, York University professor emeritus of historical geography. “My sense is that at Library and Archives Canada, there’s no corporate memory. … I had no trouble in the old days working with the archives, because if I had a problem, I could ask Ed [retired maps curator Ed Dahl],” Heidenreich says. “The new people there are technicians. They’re less well informed.”

Location’s another issue, the article says: “Today, staff are faced with a challenge in becoming intimately familiar with the holdings: The map collection is in storage in two places (Gatineau, Que., and Renfrew, Ont.), public service is in a third building, and archivists in a fourth.” (To be fair, the latter two buildings are across the street from one another, and the archivists are transferring to the Gatineau building, but the point holds.)

Via MapHist. See previous entry: I Told Them We Already Got One.