Canada and the World: An Atlas Resource

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

These two atlases do present some duplicated coverage for about the same target market and price range. The Prentice-Hall book is brand new, apparently three years in the making. It takes a thematic approach of history, geography, social and economic factors, as well as cultural influences. Resources also include visual displays of geologic features, energy, climate, soils, agriculture, migration, and native peoples (this latter is not in the Oxford atlas). The Oxford atlas is a revision of its standard school atlas: there are 32 pages of statistics, based on the 1981 Census and other up-to-date sources (including the UN Statistics Yearbook for 1983), 41 pages of Canadian maps (mostly on themes), about 61 world maps, and 26 maps on world themes such as medical care and religions.

Both atlases are meant for students, but they are certainly cheap enough for home purchase and for all library branches. As I said, there is slight difference between the two. The Prentice-Hall book is available in hardback, which might be a consideration for some libraries. There is more colour in the Oxford atlas, but there is more on Canada in the Prentice-Hall atlas (and double-page maps as well). Most libraries will probably end up buying both titles.