Artykuł napisano w formie autoreferatu, co pozwoliło autorowi wyrazić szereg osobistych uwag i opinii dotyczących warunków opracowania i publikacji drugiego wydania Atlasu Śląska Dolnego i Opolskiego. Przedstawiono także wpływ zmian administracyjnych, politycznych i społeczno- -gospodarczych na charakter oraz zakres aktualizacji treści, związany z restrukturyzacją gospodarki, wolnym rynkiem, własnością prywatną oraz konkurencją. Autor dał również ogólne porównanie wektorowej grafiki komputerowej z dawną grafiką manualną oraz komputerowej reprodukcji kartograficznej z reprodukcją fotolitograficzną.
Discussion of the second edition of the Atlas of Lowerand Opole Silesia is presented in a form of an editor's review of his own work, because the preparation process, organization of editorial, editorial-technical, and at a later stage also technical-printing activities took place in conditions endangering its publication. Elaboration of the second edition was not included in any wider research program, therefore no financing was guaranteed. It was only just before the publication that the atlas was granted subsidies from Marshall Offices and regional Funds of Environmental Protection and Water Administration of Opole and Wrocław voivodships. As a part of the agreement free copies of Atlas were to be presented to libraries of elementary and secondary schools of the voivodships. Publication of the Atlas is endorsed by the Foundation for Wrocław University, as a result of a special Agreement. Editorial duties were taken over by the Foundation, as a continuation of the activities of the liquidated Laboratory of the Atlas of Lower Silesia of Wrocław University, with the same editorial team and editor in charge. The change of publisher did not affect editorial efforts, but it complicated financing, delaying the printing for several months. The first free parliamentary election took place in Poland in on 4th June 1989, when the country was still People's Republic of Poland. It established a for-mal foundation for the process of political and socio-economic changes. In 1999 a change of structure and administrative division was introduced, decreasing the number of voivodships from 49 to 16. Voivodships became centers of State and Self-government administration; they consisted of smaller units: 'powiat' and 'gmina'. Due to those changes the current edition of the Atlas of Lower and Opole Silesia is not the updated re-edition, but rather the second, changed and extended edition of the title. The second edition kept the original structural division into parts devoted to naturę and history-population-economy, each of which consists of six subject chapters. The extension concerned mainly the first part, which increased the share of nature maps in the Atlas. The contents of nature maps were extended to match the current borders of Opole and Wrocław voivodships. Some themes considered too specialist were omitted, replaced by issues of more common interest. The most significant changes were introduced in the section devoted to the use and state of environment, as well as factors endangering it, such as a series of maps showing hydro-technical use of Odra river within the limits of selected cities, and the flood hazard in the Odra valley, exemplified with disastrous floods of 1854, 1903 and 1997. In the same series there are maps showing the more detailed rangę of flooded area within selected cities. These are examples of high risk areas, because of dense population, compact dwellings and elements of technical and municipal infrastructure. Environmental change is also presented in a map of deforestation from 10th to 20th century. It attempts to reconstruct the forest cover in three time cross-sections. This map supplements the map of potential natural foliage. New maps broaden the ecological scope of the Atlas and enhance its educational value. They do not relate to political or socio-economic processes, but present natural conditions of the development of the region. Updating of the contents and changes in the second basie part of the Atlas followed a different route. It combined contents update with adaptation to political changes. Ali the maps of population and economy (except those in the section devoted to history) were updated mainly with the results of the National Ce-sus and the Agricultural Census of 2002. The political transformation which has continued in Poland since the eighties brought about a number of changes in map contents and complicated their interpretation. This is particularly visible in the case of agriculture, which relies not only on the location and quality of agricultural produetion space but also on the new relations of land ownership. The State continues to be the dominant landowner, though land is mostly cultivated by tenant farmers. This leads to a distorted picture of the agrarian structure of agriculture, while statisties still differentiate the so-called 'individual farms', although 'collective farms' of the past do not exist any more. Because of that all maps of agriculture present a state in transformation, and statisties are still entangled in the methodology of gathering and grouping of data inherited from the era of ideological domination of state economic policy. Industry and transportation in the second edition of the Atlas show highly advanced processes of organizational changes. The ownership of the means of produetion does not statistically divide produetion into private and state owned, because profitability became the dominating factor. The results of the 2002 census were grouped according to major sections of national economy rather than by the previously preferred branch division. It resulted in significant changes in the Atlas, because the former analytical branch approach to industry had been replaced with one comprehensive economic map. 'Services' is the section of the Atlas where political changes are most visible. It is reflected in the grouping of statistical data and distinct blurring of the division between service types, also because of private - public partnerships in the service sector. In such cases it was assumed that presentation of the level of saturation of service offer is more important than its economic aspect. This phenomenon is most evident in education and healthcare (basic medical services); it also affects higher education, science, culture and art. Tourism, reereation and leisure, as well as trade, develop in a definitely autonomous way, i.e. service offer is shaped by market demand, and its implementation by the price and quality of service. As a result, also in this problem section the priority was given to service offer rather than socio-economic conditions of its delivery. In his rather subjective paper the author also stresses the geographical character of the second edition of the Atlas of Lower and Opole Silesia and the specific character of digital techniques applied in geographic cartography.
