Features: Spring 2025
Editor: Georgia Brown
Hello!
Round Up about the “Gulf of ‘America’”
From the United States Geological Survey Website:
USGS and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names have implemented name changes following Executive and Secretary’s Orders. Last week, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names played an essential role to enact the Secretary’s Order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Following President Trump’s Executive Order 14172, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum signed on February 7 Secretary’s Order 3423, “The Gulf of America,” and directed the BGN to immediately rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Federal agencies are currently in the process of updating their maps, products, and services to reflect the Gulf of America name change.
To accelerate adoption of the new name, the USGS has updated the USGS topoBuilder application to ensure that the public can rapidly generate paper maps with the new name. The USGS has also invested additional funding to speed up topoBuilder’s responsiveness in anticipation of high demand. In addition, the new name is featured in popular USGS applications like the National Map Viewer, Lidar Explorer, and the Geographic Names Information System Search Tool.
But what does this mean for our cataloged maps?
A helpful thread from the Universities of Wisconsin cataloger’s listserv. As someone who is not a cataloger, this was very informative! It started with an email from UW La Crosse’s Mike Olsen:
On February 18, the Library of Congress (LC) announced a list of 45 proposed revisions to the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), including changes from “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” and “Mount Denali” back to “Mount McKinley.” The announcement was backdated to February 13, but the public was only notified on February 18, with the same day as the deadline for comments. This was unusual as LC typically allows three weeks for public comments.
On February 19, Judith Cannan from LC’s Policy, Training & Cooperative Programs Division stated that LC defers to the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) for place names. Despite opposition, the changes will proceed. Libraries are encouraged to consider local alternatives, such as continuing to use the old LCSH or the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names.
A reply from UW Madison’s Kate Dunn about these changes happening in catalog records:
For us as Alma libraries, here is the overall process for heading changes:
- Heading change approved by LC (these changes have not been released as approved yet but presumably they will, maybe in April as CPSO meets quarterly now?)
- LC distributes the changes in their authority records
- Ex Libris loads updated authority records weekly to the Community Zone (weekly for LCSH)
- Old headings in the bib records that have been changed are flipped to match the new heading, by Alma’s preferred term correction job (this runs daily but the LC changes come in weekly on Fridays)
For now, we wait!
As always, let me know if you have anything you’d like to announce in the WAML IB Features at browngl@uwm.edu.
Conferences
May 19-23, 2025 – 10th Annual Geo4LibCamp, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Register now to reserve your spot at Geo4LibCamp 2025!
May 19-23, 2025 – May 2025 IIIF Online Training (5-Day Course)
May 21-23, 2025 – Map and Geospatial Curators Group Meeting – Mapping the Future: Collaboration & Advocacy, Harikopo University, Athens, Greece. The Map and Geospatial Curators Group will meet in Spring 2025 to discuss the current state of our profession, explore ways to organize ourselves more effectively and share perspectives on our Group’s future. This will be an opportunity to exchange ideas, address challenges, and identify potential collaborations that can strengthen our community. Your insights and participation will be invaluable in shaping the direction of our profession and ensuring its continued relevance. We are also organizing visits to collections in Athens.
We welcome proposals for presentations, panels, that explore the vital role of collaboration and advocacy in securing the future of map libraries and collections. As artificial intelligence reshapes the information landscape, budgets tighten, and professional networks become more important than ever, we must work together to ensure our collections remain accessible, valued, and well-supported. Submission Deadline: April 18, 2025, to mapcurators@gmail.com with the subject heading “2025 MAGIC Meeting”.
June 1-6, 2025 – Charlottesville Matthew Edney will be teaching a week-long seminar, H-65, Material Foundations of Map History, 1450–1900, at Rare Book School, University of Virginia. The course is intended for students, faculty, librarians, dealers, collectors, and anyone interested in early maps, whether beginners or experts. It includes broad introduction to maps and their materiality; particular consideration of atlases, maps in books, and bibliographical practices; hands-on printing with letterpress and intaglio presses; and in-class examination of maps and books from RBS’s own collections.
June 2-5, 2025 – IIIF Annual Conference and Showcase, Leeds, England, UK
June 11-13, 2025 – 58th Annual CARTO conference, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario with pre-conference workshops scheduled on June 10th.
June 26-30, 2025 – ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition, Philadelphia
August 16 – 22, 2025 – 32nd International Cartographic Conference | 32e Conférence cartographique internationale, Vancouver, Canada. Mapping the Future: Innovation, Inclusion, And Sustainability.
September 24 – 27, 2025 – Western Association of Map Libraries Annual Conference
September 19-October 3, 2025 – September 2025 IIIF Online Training (5-Day Course)
October 14-18, 2025 – NACIS Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY.
October 23-25, 2025 – 66th Annual Conference of The Society for the History of Discoveries.
Meetings
April 17, 2026 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society will meet at 5:30 pm CT (Social Time) in The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton St. At 6:00 pm CT Daniel Block will discuss Finding Food: How We Map and Talk About Food Access in Chicago and Beyond.
April 23, 2025 – Online @ 1:00 pm EDT – FDLP Pre-Meeting: Updates from GPO. Learn more and register to attend.
April 24, 2025 – Milwaukee The annual Arthur Holzheimer Lecture Series will be held at the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There will be a reception at 5:30 pm and the lecture will begin at 6 pm. The speakers are Ian Spangler, Assistant Curator of Digital and Participatory Geography and Emily Bowe, Assistant Director, both of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library. The title of their talk is Processing Place: How Computers and Cartographer Redrew our World.
April 24, 2025 – Washington Kris Butler (Senior Career Coach at Holland & Knight, lawyer, and author of “Drink Maps in Victorian Britain”) will speak about American Drink Maps of the Boston area and towns in Maine and New Hampshire in later editions of Rowntree & Sherwell’s The Temperance Problem and Social Reform. Talk will be at 6:00 pm in Holland & Knight, 800 17th Street, NW. Kris will share new research since the publication of her book on little known versions of United States drink maps made to persuade lawmakers to reduce the number of places to buy alcohol. Craft beer will be served. Security in the building requires registration for this meeting by April 22.
April 26, 2025 – Richmond Map Day at Library of Virginia, 800 E Broad St., will have:
10:00 am – Noon: Map appraisals by Old World Auctions; conservation assessments by Leslie Courtois, LVA Conservator; and guided tours of map exhibition, “Mapping the Commonwealth, 1816-1826,” by Cassandra Farrell, Exhibition Curator and Senior Map Archivist.
Noon – 1:00 pm: Lunch
1:00 – 3:00 pm, Program Presentations
First Speaker: Ronald Grim, Vice President and Program Chair, Washington Map Society, with presentation entitled “‘Compiled from Official Sources,’ The First Official State Maps.”
Second Speaker: Martin Brückner, Professor of English and Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware, with presentation entitled, “Selling Virginia: State Maps and the Marketplace, 1800-1840.”
May 01, 2025 – Online @ 12:00 pm EDT – Spring 2025 DLC Virtual Meeting. Learn more and register to attend.
May 7, 2025 – Chicago (Hybrid) The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton St., will have a meeting from 6:00-7:00pm. Barbara Mundy, in conversation with Lia Markey and David Weimer, will discuss The 1524 Cortés Map of Tenochtitlán, Mexico. This program will be held in-person at the Newberry and livestreamed on Zoom. Register here.
May 8, 2025 – Washington The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division and Philip Lee Phillips Society will meet in LOC Jefferson Building, LJ119 (Mahogany Row). Title: Exploring Map Surrounds. Two presentations with speakers discussing the significance of cartouches and watermarks on maps from Library of Congress collections.
First speaker (1:45pm): Chet Van Duzer, Historian of cartography, PLPS Fellow, and board member of the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester, with presentation entitled “Drawing Identity: Cartographic Self-Portraits in the 20th and 21st Centuries.”
2:45 – 3:15pm ET: Break with refreshments and Geography and Map display.
Second speakers (3:15pm): Dr. Juliet Wiersema, Pre-Hispanic and Spanish Colonial Art History at University of Texas-San Antonio, and Meghan Hill, Preservation Science Specialist at the Library of Congress with presentation entitled, “Sights on Spice. A Historical and Material Exploration of William Hack’s A Description of the Sea Coasts … East Indies”
May 15, 2025 – Chicago You are invited to join the Chicago Map Society for an informative program at the Newberry Library, 60 W Walton St. 5:30 p.m. – social hour (delicious finger food and light refreshments); 6:00 p.m. – presentation by Richard Condit Maps, Biogeography, and Species Extinction.
May 20-23, 2025 – Ottawa We warmly invite you to join Carleton University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers from May 20 to 23, held jointly with the 50th Annual Conference and General Meeting of the Canadian Cartographic Association from May 20 to 21.
June 5, 2025 – Washington (Online) Hosted by the Washington Map Society, this Zoom meeting is presented in partnership with the California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies. Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap(at)gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode. Meeting will start at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Casey Price (Recent Ph.D. Graduate and Visiting Teaching Professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville) will discuss Our Fire Sits Here’: The French Cartography of Indigenous Coalescence in the Native South.