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Current Issue: September - October 2011   |    Previous Issues    |   Submit a Tidbit
 

 

Benchmarks: People & Jobs

  • Stanford has a posting available for a Science Data Librarian. Responsible to: Assistant Director of Geospatial, Cartographic and Scientific Data & Services.

New Maps of the WAML Region

Publications about Mapping

Other Map Organization Journals

  • GSIS: Newsletter (posted 6 months after publication)
  • NACIS: Cartographic Perspectives (note: In 2011, this will become a primarily digital, open access journal. Right now all issues are available online except the current issue).
  • CUAC : Cartographic Users Advisory Council
  • ANZMaps: The Australian and New Zealand Map Society Newsletter
  News | Conferences | Cataloging | Canadiana | New Maps & Web Sites


News

WAML News

Other News

Future WAML Meetings:

Conferences, Classes & Exhibitions
  • Exhibitions in the West via Cartography - Calendar of Exhibitions:

    • August 22, 2011 - May 30, 2012 – Tucson
    Becoming Arizona: The Valentine State is an exhibit in celebration of 100 years of Arizona statehood. On February 14, 1912, Arizona became the 48th state, and the last of the contiguous states, to join the Union. Known as the “Valentine State,” Arizona’s path to statehood was marked by a pioneering spirit, intermittent achievement and political debate. Becoming Arizona: The Valentine State recreates the colorful story of Arizona’s path to statehood. This year-long exhibition is on display in the gallery at Special Collections, 1510 E. University Blvd. Becoming Arizona features a selection of maps, books, photographs, letters, scrapbooks and unique items selected from Special Collections’ extensive Southwest and Borderlands holdings. The exhibit documents the experiences and stories that defined the region during the colonial period, territorial times and the years leading up to 1912 statehood .

    November 8, 2011 – November 4, 2012 - Los Angeles
    Tracing the growth of Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest city, is the topic of the new exhibit, As the City Grew: Historical Maps of Los Angeles, on display at the Central Library, First Floor Galleries, 630 W. Fifth St., downtown. The 34 historical maps in the exhibition are from the Los Angeles Public Library’s 100-year-old map collection, which contains more than 100,000 items and represents local, national and international cartography. It is one of the largest collections owned by a public library in the U.S. and is noted for materials relating to Los Angeles and the West including historical topographical maps, road maps, street guides, and fire insurance atlases.

    December 1, 2011 - Spring 2012 - Helena, Montana
    Mapping Montana: Two Centuries of Cartography can be seen at Montana Historical Society, 225 North Roberts, Lobby Gallery. In December 1965 the Montana Historical Society marked the centennial of the creation of Montana’s first map, drawn by preeminent cartographer and surveyor, Walter W. de Lacy, with an exhibit of de Lacy’s maps. For the first time since 1965 the Historical Society is displaying a selection of the institution’s massive collection of over 10,000 maps. This unique collaboration between the Historical Society’s Research Center and the Museum will tell the story of Montana’s past from early exploration to the Indian wars to the arrival of the railroad and through the development of Montana’s industries of mining, cattle ranching, farming, and tourism. The exhibit will also document the creation of towns and cities, national parks and forests, and highways.

    February 15, 2012 – September 15, 2012 - Astoria, Oregon
    An exhibition titled Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps, 1472-1700 can be seen at Columbia River Maritime Museum, 1792 Marine Drive. The exhibition will feature approximately 30 rare world maps drawn from the collection of Henry Wendt, and will explore the major trends in intellectual history from the early Renaissance through the scientific era of the Enlightenment. Through the language of cartography, the maps in the exhibition illustrate the way in which scientists, mathematicians, explorers and cartographers came to grips with the shape, size and nature of the Earth as a whole and its place in the universe. Highlighted in the exhibition are the important contributions to this evolving cosmography of: Ptolemy (c. 90-168 ); Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543); Galileo Galilei (1564-1642); Johannes Kepler (1571-1630); and Edmond Halley (1656-1742). Works featured in the exhibition include: the first printed map (1472), a schematic concept of the continents in the form of a "T" encircled by an "O" of ocean; the first printed road map (1598), showing the cursus publicus, the postal system of the Roman Empire, in eight sections totaling 14 linear feet; highly decorative exemplars from the golden age of Dutch mapmaking (17th century); and elaborate hand-colored celestial views (1700), representing the constellations with figures from Greek mythology. A concurrent exhibition, Mapping the Pacific Coast: Coronado to Lewis and Clark. The Quivira Collection, is a world class exhibition showcasing 45 magnificent maps, books and illustrations, dated 1544 through 1802, of the west coast of North America. It invites viewers on a voyage of exploration from the first tentative probing by European explorers through Thomas Jefferson’s commission of the Corps of Discovery.

    February 24, 2012 – May 30, 2012 - Tijuana
    Changing Boundaries: Historic Maps of the U.S.-Mexico Border is an exhibit of maps that illustrate how the present U.S.-Mexico border region has evolved over the past four centuries. It will be on display at "Fronteras Cambiantes" - CECUT, Tijuana Cultural Center, Paseo de los Héroes No. 9350, Zona Urbana Río. The maps on display are from the collection of Simon Burrow, who curates the exhibit. Burrow has been acquiring items in his collection from map and used book dealers around the world over a span of 25 years. The maps, which date as early as 1597, show the explorations, claims, counter claims and conquests that resulted in the current borderline. There are examples of how California was depicted as an island populated by Amazons and maps that show where ancient and mythical cities were thought to be, as well as treasure maps that would allegedly lead to Cibola – the Seven Cities of Gold.

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Cataloging News

    Upcoming Programs

    Northern Ohio Technical Services Librarians (NOTSL) Fall Meeting (http://notsl.org/)

    “Coming to Terms with Genre/Form Access” will be held at Kent State University Library on December 9, 2012 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Speakers include Janis Young, Senior Policy Specialist and Genre/Form Coordinator of LC’s Policy and Standards Division; Karen Anderson, Authority Control Librarian at Backstage Library Works; and Paige Andrew, Maps Cataloging Librarian at the Pennsylvania State University. Janis will provide information on the ongoing project to both establish and update form/genre headings in the LC Name Authority File while simultaneously building the new LC Genre/Form Thesaurus (LCGFT) and talk in-depth about form/genre headings as they are applied to our bibliographic records. Karen will provide a vendor’s-side look at the implementation of these headings and working with the LCGFT in her daily work. Paige will provide a case study look at how the Cataloging and Metadata Services Department at Penn State is applying the new cartographic form/genre headings in the Map Cataloging Team’s daily work as well as a look at how form/genre headings for other materials have been applied over the years. Registration fee is $50 and the form can be found here:  http://notsl.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/registration-2011-fall4.pdf. If you’re in the area come and join us!

    ALA Midwinter Meeting/Map and Geospatial Information Programs

    Friday, January 20th
    • Evening Social event (TBD)
    Saturday, January 21st
    • 1:30 – 3:30PM Map Collection Management Discussion Group
    • 3:30 – 5:30PM GIS Discussion Group
    Sunday, January 22nd
    • 8AM – 10AM ALCTS/MAGIRT Map Cataloging Discussion Group
    • 10AM – 12PM Cataloging and Classification Committee Meeting
    • 1:30 – 3:30PM Executive Board Meeting

    Recent Cataloging-Related Information from the Library of Congress

    Expansion of National Level Enhance to NACO Participants

    During August 2011, in cooperation with the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), OCLC has expanded the capabilities of OCLC participants with NACO authorizations. Individuals with NACO authorizations, along with those with National Level CONSER and National Level Enhance authorizations, which already include NACO capabilities, are now able to edit and replace BIBCO records (non-serial records with 042 code “pcc”). Creation of new BIBCO records and authentication of existing non-BIBCO records (i.e., adding 042 code “pcc”) will continue to be restricted to those with National Level Enhance authorizations in their specified formats. OCLC is working with NACO participants to familiarize them with their new capabilities.

    Subject Heading Proposal Form Recently Changed

    For those of you who are PCC members that participate in the Subject Authority Cooperative Program (SACO), which for our community means that this is the route to take whenever we want to propose a new non-jurisdictional geographic subject heading for LCSH such as for a river or mountain, LC recently moved this form to be a part of Classification Web. Formerly this was a stand-alone form located at the SACO website. It can now be found here: http://classificationweb.net/Menu/lcsh.html.

    Resource Description and Access (RDA) Update

    RDA keeps on rolling along! Nothing Earth-shattering is happening here but there are some recent activities to be aware of, especially those that were identified at ALA Annual Conference 2011 that had to be met before the agreed-upon Jan. 2013 implementation date in order to officially launch it in the U.S. Final Reports have been completed for three Task Groups related to RDA:

    PCC ISBD and MARC Task Force Final Report: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/ISBD-TaskForce.html

    “While the new code [RDA] is now documented in MARC21, the bulk of MARC21 documentation is written based on routine inclusion of punctuation. Nearly all records created by libraries in North America continue to include ISBD punctuation. The MARC21 community needs to transition to an environment where nearly all records created omit ISBD punctuation.

    As an initial step in such a transition, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging called for the establishment of a task group to further investigate these issues. The PCC ISBD and MARC Task Group was established in March 2011 and was charged with the following: investigate the omission of ISBD punctuation from the cataloging process in favor of having cataloging interfaces generate punctuation needed for display; perform a field-by-field analysis of MARC to identify instances of embedded ISBD punctuation; and, identify the use of any non-ISBD punctuation present in fields. As part of the analysis the group also identified areas where MARC coding needs to be more granular to handle the omission of punctuation. Most of the work of the task group was conducted via email.”

    PCC Task Group on Hybrid Bibliographic Records Final Report: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/RDA-Hybrid-bib-TG.html

    “The PCC Task Group on Hybrid Bibliographic Records arose from a session held at the joint CONSER/BIBCO Operations Committee’s annual meeting May 5, 2011. At that meeting, Shana McDanold introduced the question of how to address enhancement and maintenance of bibliographic records during a time of changing codes. The PCC Policy Committee charged the Task Group to:
    ‘Investigate the use of hybrid records, particularly in regard to these issues:
     

    • In performing maintenance on an existing record, e.g. updating the descriptive information for a serial or multi-part item, should/can a record created under one code be changed to a different code? In what situations?
    • How much is it desirable/permissible to change existing bibliographic records for other reasons, in areas other than headings, e.g. to add fields 336-338?
    • What types of changes or amount of changes made to a bibliographic record should trigger a change of Leader/18 (Descriptive cataloging form), e.g. from “a” for AACR2 to a code appropriate for RDA?

    Make recommendations for best practices, providing the reasons behind them, and, if possible, articulating general principles for applying the practices’, and

    The Committee further charged, ‘A goal in this work is to find non-energy-intensive means of implementing a new set of rules, while gaining a maximum of the benefits from RDA’.” PCC Task Group on AACR2 & RDA Acceptable Heading Categories Final Report: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/RDA-Acceptable-TG.html

    “The PCC Task Group on RDA Acceptable Heading Categories is charged to:

    • Discern types of headings currently existing within the authority file (LC NAF) that fall into one of the following three categories,
    1. Headings constructed under AACR2 and valid under RDA, therefore usable as-is
    2. Headings constructed under AACR2, in need of change to be used as valid RDA headings
    3. Gray areas, where the need for change is uncertain
    • Identify specs for writing a report that could be used to collect all the records for each type of heading above
    • For category 1 (headings valid under RDA), recommend whether 008/10 (Descriptive cataloging rules) should systematically be relabeled as “z” for RDA, or whether such headings should simply be “grand fathered in” as is.
    • For category 2 (headings not valid under RDA), determine if it is possible to provide specifications for making changes to the headings in an automated batch manner
    • For category 3, briefly explain why each type is ambiguous and recommend if possible how to proceed

    A goal in this work is to find non-energy-intensive means of implementing a new set of rules, while gaining a maximum of the benefits from RDA.”

    A Couple of Recent Interesting Articles on Search Interfaces Based on Geographic Content

    While neither of the following is specifically about cartographic materials cataloging per se, both have everything to do with data that we place in bibliographic records, particularly coordinate values, and how these can lead to better and more efficient ways to discover maps and even other types of information resources online. So, I bring the following to your attention for your reading pleasure!

    mapFAST: A FAST Geographic Authorities Mashup with Google Maps by Rick Bennett, Edward T. O’Neill, Kerre Kammerer, and J.D. Shipengrover. Code4Lib Journal, Issue 14, July 25, 2011. Found at: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/5645

    MapRank: Geographical Search for Cartographic Materials in Libraries by Markus Oehrli, Petr Pridal, Susanne Zollinger, and Rosi Siber. D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 9/10, Sept.-Oct. 2011. Found at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september11/oehrli/09oehrli.html  

    Paige Andrew
    Pennsylvania State University


Canadian News

    The next annual conference of the Association of Canadian Map Libraries & Archives (ACMLA) will be held at Ryerson University in Toronto from June 12 – 15, 2012, with pre-conference workshops to be held at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus.

    The library of the Canadian federal Dept. of Natural Resources (NRCan) and ACMLA are  currently organizing a retrospective map scanning project for older Canadian NTS (National Topographic System) maps. Standards for metadata and scanning are being developed by the National Library of Canada and the library of Natural Resources Canada. The project charter calls for the gathering of metadata for each edition of each map sheet going back to the 1920’s and to scan them all. It is expected that Canadian university libraries will volunteer to undertake portions of this massive project. There are currently ca. 15,000 map titles in the NTS, most in multiple editions.

    Tim Ross
    University of British Columbia

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New Maps & Web Sites of Interest

  • The Atlantic magazine has been actively adding maps to their website since September, such as The World's Best Subway Maps. See also their 7 Must-Read Books on Maps. Another recent discovery are maps available at Retronaut.

  • The Selden Map of China is a website dedicated to an early map of China from the Bodleian Library.

  • Here is a very useful and interesting site of Historical World Boundary Maps from 2000 B.C. to 2008 A.D. This site also includes Historical U.S. County Boundary Maps.

  • Princeton Uiversity's digitization of Vandermaelen's Atlas Universel (1827), consisting of approximately 380 conically projected sheets of maps and 40 pages of statistical tables in six volumes. This folio-size atlas is remarkable for several reasons. It is the first atlas produced by the then new printing process of lithography. It is also the first atlas to show the whole world in maps using a large uniform scale—about 26 miles to the inch. Moreover, the maps are designed to be joined into a three-dimensional terrestrial globe with a diameter of approximately 7.75 meters (almost 25 feet). The library's Digital Studio joined in our project to digitize the sheets so that they could be made available, in high resolution, over the web. In addition, because of the projection of the maps, we felt that stitching the continental maps together and wrapping their "skin" over a generic globe would provide a unique viewing experience--creating a virtual 3D version of Vandermaelen's physical globe.

  • Now available online is a reconctruction of the Tabula Peutingeriana, the Roman Roadmap, at http://omnesviae.org/.

  • Topography of Terror: Maps of the Warsaw Ghetto: During the 24th International Conference on the History of Cartography in Moscow in July of this year, our friend Harrie Theunissen from the Netherlands presented a very well received paper on "Topography of Terror: Maps of the Warsaw Ghetto". During this presentation Harrie showed several original maps of the Ghetto that he has collected over the years with his partner John Steegh, illustrated how these maps were used by the German military to systematically surpress the Jewish population and confine them to an always decreasing urban space. For several reasons Harrie decided not to publish his paper in one of the journals of our field. Instead he preferres to present a much enlarged version of his paper (with much more maps) on the web. Those who are interested in the paper (that really shows how much context matters in defining and understanding cartographies of suppression) should follow the accompnying link.--Paul van den Brink, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

  • I am pleased to announce the launch of a new virtual exhibition of American maps from the late 18th century. Based on an exhibit I had the opportunity to curate at the Harvard Map Collection in early 2011, "Toward a National Cartography" traces the evolution of mapmaking during the formative years after the American Revolution. These maps reveal the ways in which Americans, no longer constrained by British administration, sought to transform the landscape to suit their own economic and political goals. Included in the exhibition are maps by Abraham Bradley, Osgood Carleton, Christopher Colles, Andrew Ellicott, John Fitch, John Norman, Jonathan Price and John Strother, and others. The virtual exhibition may be viewed at http://www.americanmapmaking.com/.--Michael Buehler, Boston Rare Maps

  • New at DavidRumsey.com: San Francisco Aerial Photographs 1938: We have put online a set of 164 large format, sharp, black and white vertical aerial photographs of San Francisco taken in 1938 from an airplane by Harrison Ryker, a pioneer in aerial photography. The photographs overlap each other and cover the entire city. The resolution is generally better than one foot or even higher with high contrast features allowing visibility of even the paint striping on a basketball court.  Relative heights are frequently discernible based on the shadows cast of objects and structures. A handwritten date on the index map indicates the photographs were taken in August, 1938. The photographs are owned by the San Francisco Public Library and are a continuation of our collaboration with them on scanning and putting online important historical maps and views of San Francisco (including our prior collaboration on the1905 San Francisco Sanborn Insurance Atlas).

  • Mapping the Food Crisis in the Horn of Africa (USAID)

  • Certainly, by now you've seen this: What Your Favorite Map Projection Says About You. I like the Winkel-Tripel because it sounds like a beer.

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Last modified: December 2, 2011
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