The President of the British Cartographic Society, Mary Spence has challenged the accuracy of online maps such as Google Maps and Multimap and said that they are often inconsistent. She was speaking at the Royal Geographical Society's annual conference about the fear that people have in map reading and that new technologies such as “satnav” and internet maps do not help. The art of being able to read a map was being lost.
She said that people were less able to recognise Ordnance Survey landmarks on maps such as churches, woodlands and stately homes. Mary Spence gave an example at the conference of a Google map of Worcester which omits the Cathedral and said that the Abbey was omitted from the map of Tewkesbury.
Ordnance Survey's Paul Beauchamp commented on the number of paper maps that are sold each year – 3.3 million in all and that a free map is given to every 11 year old. He also expressed concerns about sat navs pointing people in the wrong direction and the importance of being able to map read.
Ed Parsons of Google doubted that internet maps and new technology would have an effect, as many walkers and hikers used traditional maps. He added that online maps could be updated more quickly.
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