Galaxies exist over a remarkable range of luminosities and sizes. Unfortunately most of our existing knowledge of the galaxy population is strongly biased towards luminous galaxies which contrast favourably against the night sky. Deep surveys, which probe to high redshifts, are typically motivated to explore how these giant systems have evolved. However deep surveys also allow us to explore the more extreme types of galaxies locally, i.e., the dwarfs, low- and high- surface brightness systems. Here we review the regions of "galaxy-space" which are known and present the current results from three ongoing surveys which aim to map out the full details of the local galaxy population.

I contest that this is a crucial step that must be undertaken before the mechanisms of galaxy evolution can be fully understood.