ABSTRACT
This brief item makes the case for establishing – in the absence of any suitable existing institution – a center dedicated to continuation and expansion of the efforts to produce what became the Barrington Atlas. By 1997, when the item was published, two transformative developments were unquestionable. First, the prospects for the classical atlas project having a successful outcome had improved from dubious to likely. Second, the shift from film-based production to digital, and the ever-increasing sophistication of the new technology, now offered quite unprecedented scope for updating and adapting maps, as well as freeing them from the constraints of the page. In consequence, the atlas need no longer remain the fixed, unchanging resource envisaged at the outset of the project, but instead could become the inspiration and platform for limitless further cartographic initiatives, as item 13 illustrates in the first instance.
