WAML News
…by Mike Smith
The next WAML meeting will be held at the San Diego State University campus from September 12-15, 2018. If you would like to present or have ideas for possible activities or the field trip, please contact Michael Smith (mls003@ucsd.edu) and/or Lisa Lamont (mlamont@mail.sdsu.edu).
Longtime WAML member Mary Larsgaard passed away July 17, 2017. The Journal of Map & Geography Libraries has provided free access to Mapping a Life Journey, an interview with Dawn Youngblood which was published online in December 2009: (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15420350903432713)
Benchmarks: People & Jobs
UC San Diego is very glad to announce that Amy Work joined the library in November as the GIS Librarian. Previously, Amy was working in Costa Rica with Geoporter (Geospatial Educators Opportunities for Partnership Outreach Research and Training) as its director and co-founder. During the past four years, she worked with the community and applied geospatial technologies to efforts including humpback whale monitoring, street and marine debris, water pollution, and reforestation.
Amy has also worked with faculty at academic institutions across the U.S. to integrate geospatial technologies into curricula and research. She was the GIS Analyst and Education Coordinator for the Institute for the Application of Geospatial Technology at Cayuga Community College in Auburn, NY. She taught as an adjunct instructor for GIS and World Geography courses there. At Syracuse University, she led the GIS and Remote Sensing Labs as a teaching assistant. She has been a Contracted Instructor for Esri Teachers Teaching Teachers GIS. She has been involved in many GIS-related grants and projects, including serving as PI and Co-PI on geospatial data related NSF, NASA, and State funded research grants.
A couple of interesting facts about Amy – She was recognized by Office of Vice President Joseph R. Biden (also a Syracuse University graduate—Go Orange!) in 2010 as a contributing author on “Climate 1-Stop” NSF grant, which was named 1 of the top 12 projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. And Amy is a two-time national champion in women’s college soccer at Ohio Wesleyan University. She looks forward to joining and contributing to WAML.
Other News
Guide to US Map Resources
WAML member Chris Thiry’s Guide to U.S. Map Resources was published in 2006. For the next “edition,” ALA’s MAGIRT has created an online version. It was announced a while ago, but it’s still looking for contributions. So here is a reminder to provide information for your library (including myself!).
Survey for Online Guide to U.S. Map Collections
Get on the map! Complete this survey to update the Guide to U.S. Map Collections and to create a comprehensive directory of map collections, big and small, across the United States. This initiative is a project of the Map and Geospatial Information Round Table of the American Library Association.
View the beta version of MAGIRT’s Online Guide to U.S. Map Collections
Why Participate?
- Help create the comprehensive Online Guide to U.S. Map Collections
- Raise awareness of map collections that are often hidden inside larger institutions
- Provide access for the purposes of education and collaboration
- Assist the federal government in determining the status of government-produced cartographic materials in U.S. libraries
- Participate in a nation-wide MAGIRT initiative to identify map collections, big and small, across the U.S.
Outcomes
- Crowd-sourced directory of U. S. map collections
- Searchable map interface so that collections can be easily located by their geographic location
- Searchable subject specialties within specific collections
- Update information to collections, personnel, and websites since publication of the 2006 Guide to U.S. Map Resources
- Provide information about the collection and retention of government-produced maps by institutions participating in the Federal Depository Library Program
- Promote map collections in the United States and demonstrate current relevance throughout the U.S.
In Memorium
Juneau’s historian, map and book antiquarian Dee Longenbaugh recently died at 84. I don’t know if she was ever involved with WAML, but I think she would have fit right in at our meetings. I remember reading her posts on the old MapHist listserv.
Conferences, Classes & Exhibitions
The MAGIRT Annual Conference Program (Chicago, 2017) is now available online:
Download presentations for “Visualizing Family History with Maps” and “How to Georeference and Use a Historic Map.” The 2018 program at the New Orleans conference is Understanding and Using Spatial Humanities: Digital Mapping at the Forefront of Scholarly Research.
Society for the History of Discoveries
September 20-23, 2018 – Golden, Colorado, The 2018 Society for the History of Discoveries meeting will be provided in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Map Society, and will be held at the Colorado School of Mines (and Chris Thiry?!?). The RMMS pre-conference, Golden Quest: Mapping the Stampedes, will take place on Thursday, before the traditional opening reception of the SHD conference that evening, followed by SHD’s program, Great Mountains of the American West, on Friday and Saturday. The Exhibition of the Colorado Gold Rush History, a world-famous collection of rocks as well as maps of the West will be exhibited in the Geology Museum. Following the conference, on Sunday, September 23rd, will be a guided tour of original gold-rush towns in the mountains near Golden, a ride on the famous Georgetown Loop steam engine train, an expert tour of an underground gold mine, and then a tour of impressive dinosaur and geological wonders nearby.
Esri MOOC
- Esri will be hosting a free, six-week massive open online course (MOOC) on cartography. There will be two sessions. The first from April 18-May 29 and second from September 5-October 16. It will be taught by Kenneth Field, a Senior Cartographic Product Engineer at Esri, and coincides with the release of his textbook, Cartography, to be released in June.
- To register: http://go.esri.com/cartographymooc
For other events, see: Cartography – Calendar of Meetings and Events http://www.docktor.com/meeting.htm
New Maps & Web Sites of Interest
- Since News and Notes went on hiatus, there have been two major map blogs to appear, one new and one old. Worlds Revealed: Geography and Maps at the Library of Congress (https://blogs.loc.gov/maps) first appeared in late 2015 and included maps from the LoC Geography and Maps Division. A recent entry featured Historical Maps of Korea to correspond with the Olympics. https://tinyurl.com/LOC-Koreamaps (https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2018/02/historical-maps-of-korea/)
- A returning blog is The Map Room (http://www.maproomblog.com/), which reappeared in 2016 after a 4 ½-year hiatus. It recently featured that Indiana University is digitizing its collection of Russian topo maps. https://tinyurl.com/IU-Russiantopos (http://www.maproomblog.com/2018/02/indiana-university-is-digitizing-its-collection-of-russian-topo-maps/) More than 1,000 maps have already been digitized and can be viewed at: http://go.iu.edu/1u1. The maps date from 1883-1947.
- I found this very interesting: Stunning Map Showing The Age of The World’s Borders (https://moverdb.com/world-border-age/).
The map is a stunning piece of work that shows when each of the world’s international borders were first defined.
The world’s oldest border is Andorra’s 120km border with France and Spain which was fixed in a feudal charter signed on 8 September 1278. (Did anyone know that? Great trivia question.)
The world’s youngest border segment is between South Sudan and Sudan, which was only decided in 2009, although it remains disputed.
- If you like travelling by train, the worldwide OpenRailwayMap is for you!
This has apparently been around for years, but I think I missed it the first time around. Nice map! - No News and Notes would be complete without a David Rumsey Map Collection Most notably, its acquisition of an extraordinary 60 sheet manuscript world map made in 1587 by Urbano Monte. The sheets were scanned and then digitally stitched together. An accompanying blog post describes the process.
Publications about Mapping
- A Mind at Work: Urbano Monte’s 60-Sheet Manuscript World Map
https://tinyurl.com/MonteCat [PDF]
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/rumsey3/Monte/Urbano+Monte+Catalog.pdf)
- Maps that show travel times to cities all across the globe
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-cities-globe.html
An international team of researchers, including a representative from Google, has created a color-coded map of the planet that shows travel times to cities from other places. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they gathered their data and used it to plot their maps, and also discuss some things they found interesting in the maps they created. Travelling to and around India—pretty easy!
You must be logged in to post a comment.