Ministry of Defence

Mapping for the War Office was the responsibility of the Geographical Section, General Staff and its predecessors until 1943 when the Directorate of Military Survey was formed. Via its subsidiary Survey Production Centres, later Mapping and Charting Establishment, and the Map Research and Library Group, Military Survey retained this responsibility when the War Office was replaced by the Ministry of Defence in 1964, and, following several changes in status, emerged as the Defence Geographic and Imagery Intelligence Agency (DGIA) in 2000, with its subsidiary business unit, Defence Geographic Centre (DGC). As a result of de-agencification in April 2005 DGIA was renamed Defence Geospatial Intelligence, and, following a further change in status in June 2006, Intelligence Collection Group.

This collection includes an accumulation of literature on United Kingdom mapping (mostly second half of twentieth century, but some dating back to before the first World War) - on new developments in map survey and printing techniques, reports on symposia, government generated papers, periodical offprints, catalogues, promotional literature, that has passed through the hands of the Library Information Centre, DGC, and its predecessors, and is now surplus to their requirements. There is in addition much material created by Military Survey itself - map indexes, catalogues, conventional sign cards, grid reading instructions and conversions, as well as an important collection of maps published by GSGS, in particular an almost complete set of special sheets in GSGS 3906 issued in the early 1940s not often encountered elsewhere. Much other source material received via the MOD can be found in the Ordnance Survey, Ordnance Survey of Ireland, Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland collections of the Charles Close Society Archives.