Posts from — October 2007

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) has announced the publication of a new atlas: Mapping a Continent: Historical Atlas of North America, 1492-1814:

Written by Jean-François Palomino, map librarian at BAnQ, and historians Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, the work outlines the history of the continent and its cartographic representation. Featuring about 40 chapters on subjects as varied as Amerindian cartography, Acadia, North American place names, the Northwest Passage, the hydrography of the St. Lawrence, and England’s conquest of Canada, Mapping a Continent is superbly illustrated with some 200 old maps and prints, taken for the most part from BAnQ’s collections but also from several other famous collections from Canada, the United States and Europe.

Mapping a Continent: Historical Atlas of North America, 1492-1814 (cloth with dust jacket, 300 pages, colour throughout with index and bibliography) will be on sale for $89 at the Boutique of the Grande Bibliothèqueand in bookstores throughout Québec. The book is available in its original French version, La mesure d’un continent : atlas historique de l’Amérique du Nord, 1492-1814. The English version was translated by Kdthe Roth and jointly published with McGill-Queen’s University Press.

The much hyped Festival of Maps Chicago begins this Friday and The Chicago Tribune has an article about the festival, as well as a short video about  of a few of the maps that should not be missed. The Trib also has a nice photo essay,”Beyond Directions,” on festival preparations.

Via: MapHist

…on the maps stolen from the Spanish National Library in the Timesonline and, on César Gómez Rivero, the boy with the Stanley boxcutter.

The Sydney Morning Herald has details on a Ptolemy world map that was recovered in a Sydney, Australia art gallery. It is unclear if this Ptolemy map is one of the Ptolemy maps reported on earlier, or whether this is a third map. The latest article reports that the map was sold over the internet from the US to an Austrailan art dealer, while the earlier article mentions the other two maps were sold at a London auction to an Australian art dealer.

More good news on the recovery of maps stolen from the Spanish National Library. Two maps by Ptolemy have been found in Argentina, along with the theft’s main suspect: Cesar Gomez Rivero, 60, a Spaniard of Uruguayan origin.

See also earlier post.

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