IMCoS - The International Map Collectors Society

Dear Website Visitor,

Welcome to the redesigned IMCoS website.

If you are currently a member and visiting our website we hope you like the new layout and improved features. Log in with your User Name and Password. Refer to Frequently Asked Questions if you are not sure what to do.

If you are not already a member of IMCoS then we are delighted that you have surfed into our area. Please continue to read about the International Map Collectors’ Society, a group catering to anybody with an interest in maps and charts, and take time to explore the site and find out about our activities.

Our IMCoS Journal is published four times a year under the Editorship of Valerie Newby-Scott, a name you may have come across in the world of antique maps. The Journal is one of the benefits you would enjoy should you decide to become a Member of IMCoS. Rather than trying to lure you into subscribing, I would much prefer, if you would delve into our website a little further, to see for yourself whether you might feel at home in our Society. Although IMCoS originates from the United Kingdom (it was founded in 1980 in London) we have National Representatives in a great number of countries and and are far from limiting ourselves to English-speaking countries.

Apart from publishing the Journal, we have our International Symposiums each year in a different country (a very successful meeting was held in Malta in September 2011 and a full symposium is planned in Vienna in September 2012) allowing you to broaden your interest beyond local maps and providing an opportunity for meeting with fellow map lovers. It also makes for an interesting vacation trip in connection with the Symposiums, if you so desire. Wives and husbands normally come along together and have always enjoyed both the presentations and the trips and local visits.

A number of our IMCoS representatives arrange for visits in their area; London is the place to be in June each year, when our June Weekend is held, featuring the Annual General Meeting, the Annual Dinner, and the Malcolm Young Lectures. The weekend is planned to coincide with the London Map Fair and the Book Fair at Olympia in Hammersmith, London.

You will find more information on this website on most of the topics mentioned above. A small part of the available information is reserved for “Members Only” and can only be accessed by existing members, using their password.

Our Membership comprises of academics, map dealers, institutions such as libraries and museums, and - for the most part - of cartophiles, suffering from a potentially contagious disease, called love of maps. Whether your love is for small maps, big maps, local maps, international maps, cheap or expensive, is not the point. The point is that if you would like to talk, learn and share knowledge about maps, you are well advised to look up the page on the website that enables you to become an IMCoS Member.

Yours sincerely,

Hans Kok, IMCoS Chairman.