Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography

Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography (CATMOG), is a series of 59 short publications, each focused on an individual method or theory in geography.

Background and impact
Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography were produced by the Study Group in Quantitative Methods of the Institute of British Geographers. Each CATMOG publication was written on an individual topic in geography rather than a series of broad topics like traditional textbooks and ranged between 40 and 70 pages. c This à la carte approach allowed only purchasing publications on topics of interest, keeping each CATMOG relatively cheap and accessible, lowering student costs with early copies sold for around $2.00. This also offered instructors more flexibility in designing courses. The first of these publications was published in 1975, and the last in 1996. Each was written by someone working professionally with its topic, which created some issues in consistency between publications in terms of expected knowledge level, and general formatting. As they focus on core concepts of the discipline and were written by experts in the field, they are still often cited today when discussing specific topics.

The CATMOG series was published between 1975 and 1996. While the CATMOG is out of print, it has been noted as an example for at least one similar publication, is speculated to have inspired Scientific Geography Series, and has been compared to the Briefs  in  Regional  Science series. The concepts are still relevant to GIS. The Quantitative Methods Research Group (QMRG) at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute for British Geographers) has made most of the CATMOG available to download for free on their website.