Category — Cartography Lectures

The Texas Map Society’s Annual Spring Meeting will be held Friday thru Sunday, April 3-5, 2009 in San Antonio Texas.

This year’s focus is on Spanish Colonial Mapping and their Map Makers:

The three days will include presentations by a group of exceptional scholars focusing on “Spanish Colonial Mapping and Map Makers,” and an outstanding lineup of tours, dinners and events in and around one of Texas’ most famous tourist destinations.

Presenters include Richard Kagan, of John Hopkins University, our Keynote Speaker, as well as John Hébert of the Library of Congress, David Buisseret, formerly at the University of Texas at Arlington, Ricardo Padrón, at the University of Virginia, John Miller Morris of the University of Texas at San Antonio, John Wheat of the Center for American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Bruce Winders, Curator and Historian of the Alamo.

Tours include the Project Urban Segment of the San Antonio River (60 million dollar improvement project), P2 Energy Solutions for digital mapping, and the Nelson Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Via: MapHist
[tags]texas map society, map societies, map collecting, antique maps[/tags]

Today’s online edition of the London Times has a couple of articles commenting on the demise of the paper map with the rise of GPS and internet mapping services like Google Maps.

The article, “Heritage wiped off the map as sat-nav puts motorists on road to ignorance“, notes that in a recent presentation given by British Cartographic Society president Mary Spence, with the demise of paper maps and cartography, important cultural, heritage and other features, (like those often included on many paper maps,) get omitted from digital versions so they can fit on small screens, effectively eliminating much of the knowledge that tends to be inherent in paper maps.

Ms. Spence notes:

“I recently went to Worcester,” she said. “The street map was wonderful, but the cathedral was missing.” Motorists following Google Maps through Wiltshire may be told to “exit on to the A303 toward Andover”, but they may have no idea that they are passing Stonehenge.

The Times also has a commentary on the aforementioned article entitled, “Here Be Dragons – Internet maps make travelling a more efficient, but duller, experience.”

In maps, as in life, so much of what is interesting unfolds in the margins. The highlights of a long drive very often result from the impromptu diversions taken in search of petrol or lunch.

But an internet map? To paraphrase Wilde, it knows the route to everywhere and the value of nowhere. It gives you what you need, but not what you want to make the most of a trip.

Update: Read a related London Telegraph article: Map reading skills ‘dying out due to internet and satnavs’. 

[tags]GPS, Mapping, Cartography, GIS, Google Maps, Internet Mapping, British Cartographic Society[/tags]

The Library of Congress is hosting a live, participatory discussion entitled, “Charting Their Journeys:  Explorers Record the Americas, 1500 – 1900″ on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. (E.D.T.), 1:00 p.m. (CST) via OPAL.

From the search for a new trade route to the Orient to the race for a lunar landing, explorers have charted their journeys in wonderfully pictorial maps. What were the explorers’ impressions? What experiences and observations prompted the explorers to record them on maps and charts? Who knew what, when? Join Ed Redmond, Geography and Map Reference Specialist at the Library of Congress, as we glimpse these journeys to the Americas through the eyes of those who lived them. Brought to you by the Digital Reference Team of the Library of Congress.

To attend, follow these instructions:

To attend, go to
http://67.19.90.10/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs1641902f62b4

1.      Click the Download Here button in the light blue rectangle in the center of the screen.
2.      Follow the directions to download and install the plugin.
3.      Click the link in the orange rectangle to enter the room.
4.      A gray box will appear with text asking permission to launch an external application, webconference plugin.  When the grayed out text Launch application becomes black, click the Launch
application button.
5.      Type your name (no password is necessary) for the conference and click Log on to enter the online conference.

NOTE:  Allow yourself time to download the small software plugin needed to participate in the conference.  Depending on your network security requirements, you may need assistance from your local technical support group to download and install the plugin.  Actual installation should be very quick, depending on your computer and connectivity.  Use of Internet Explorer is recommended.  The conference provides text chat and Voice over IP (VoIP).  To fully participate, consider attaching a microphone to your computer.

Via: MapHist

Festival of Maps Chicago opens November 2, 2007. Organized by a board of 10 members, including former Rand McNally chairman Andrew McNally IV, it marks a four-year effort to acquire 129 maps that span centuries. The maps include everything from clay tablets to satellite imagery. Chicago is the first city to host a major maps exhibition in 50 years, with more than 25 participating museums and institutions hosting cartography-related exhibitions, lectures and events focused on the themes of exploration, discovery and mapping.

An article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the Festival states:

The public showing of 129 maps will include a jaw-dropping variety of antiquities and one-of-a-kind finds, maps of imaginary worlds and the latest in map-making and location-finding technologies.

The museum worked with Chicago-based digital map-maker Navteq to make maps come alive.

The Chicago Botanic Garden is one of the Chicago area cultural institutions participating in the event. Its display will feature maps revealing the global travels of plant explorers will be on display in the Lenhardt Library located in the Regenstein Center at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This exhibit:

…allows visitors to enter the age of plant exploration through the pages of beautiful maps found in the Library’s Rare Book Collection, which holds approximately 3,000 titles from the 15th to the 19th centuries.

You can read more about the Chicago Botanic Garden exhibition in this article.

[tags]Antique Maps, Festival of Maps Chicago, Antique Map Exhibits, Cartography Lectures[/tags]

…Ok so, it was simultaneously funny and sad for various reasons (Miss Teen South Carolina shows off her public speaking skills) but after you watch, consider these points.

A brief rundown of upcoming events related to antique map collecting from various parts of the globe that have come to my attention:

Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Historical lecture. The Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace will present the Ellsworth B. Shank Historical Lecture at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 711 Pennington Ave., Havre de Grace. The topic will be “Early Cartography and Navigation on the Chesapeake” and will be presented by John Macek of NOAA. Call 410-939-5780 for more information.

Via: The Baltimore Sun

Through March 27, 2007
GALLERY C, 3532 Wade Ave., Raleigh, North Carolina: “Rare Antique Maps and Prints,” European and American cartography of the Southeastern United States. Phone: 888-278-3973 for more information. 

Via: Relish Now!

Friday, March 30 – Saturday March 31st, 2007
Exploring and Being Explored: Africa in the Nineteenth Century is a two-day international conference at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Jointly organized by the National Maritime Museum and The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, the focus is on medicine, mapping and exploration in Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, highlighting the common ground between fields that were once thought to be independent of one another.

Via: MapHist

March 10, 2007 – 1p.m.
The Library of Virginia will host the 2007 Alan M. and Nathalie P. Voorhees Lecture on the History of Cartography. The lecture will take place in the Library of Virginia Lecture Hall.

Dr. John Hébert, chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, and Dr. Helen C. Rountree, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Old Dominion University and the author and editor of numerous works on the Native Americans of the East Coast, will deliver the fourth annual Voorhees Lecture on the History of Cartography. Dr. Hébert will look at John Smith’s map of Virginia as an active promotional device for acquiring territory. Dr. Rountree will discuss John Smith as a mapmaker who mapped what he saw, though selectively.

Prior to the lecture, attendees will have a unique opportunity to learn more about the Library’s map collection from staff members and view many of the Library’s rare maps. This will be followed by a boxed lunch. The lecture is free of charge; however, there is a small fee for the tour and boxed lunch, and advance reservations are required.

This lecture will also introduce the new Fry-Jefferson Map Society, an affinity group affiliated with the Semper Virginia Society. Members of the Fry-Jefferson Map Society will help develop, enhance and promote the cartographic collections of the Library of Virginia.

The lecture is free of charge, but reservations are required. The special tours and boxed lunch require advance registration by calling the Library of Virginia Foundation office at 804-692-3900. The Foundation office may also be contacted for information regarding the Fry-Jefferson Map Society.

Monday, March 05, 2007—Saturday, March 17, 2007
Those attending the Voorhees Lecture are also invited to enjoy special programming that includes a temporary exhibition of 23 maps and atlases, “Virginia Described: John Smith’s Map and Its Derivatives”, on view in the lobby at the Library of Virginia from March 5th through March 17th.

Via: MapHist

Maps and Society – The Warburg Institute – Sixteenth Series. Lectures in the history of cartography convened by Catherine Delano Smith (Institute of Historical Research) and Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library). Meetings are held on selected Thursdays at The Warburg Institute, University of London,Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB at 5.00 pm. Admission is free. Meetings are followed by refreshments. All are most welcome.

Enquiries: +44 (0) 20 8346 5112 (Catherine Delano Smith).

March 29, 2007 –  Dr Michael Winstanley and William Shannon (Department of History, University of Lancaster) “Lord Burghley and Elizabethan Maps of Lancashire”.

April 26, 2007 -  Hugh Prince (formerly, Department of Geography, University College London) “Surveyor or Plagiarist? The Parks on John Warburton’s Map of Hertfordshire (c. 1724)”.

May 17, 2007 - Jill Shefrin (Trinity College, University of Toronto) “Nursery Instruction: Cartographical Novelties for Georgian and Victorian Children”.

Via: MapHist