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There are two other items of related news:
A 1707 lead-mining map of Swaledale acquired by North Yorkshire County Records Office
Maps in the Stephen F. Austin Papers at the University of Texas to be conserved
An Indian-made film about the genesis of the Survey of India
Wooden tablet from a Taiwanese temple (18th century?) maps a land dispute
1963 map of the Gettysburg battle to be removed 'Emily O'Neil, Rosensteel's daughter, is disappointed
that the National Park Service has excluded the map from the new Gettysburg Visitors center. "It is just an incredible
way to visualize those three days of the battle," she says. "The actual intent that my father had remains viable and
extremely important to so many people." Kathi Schue, president of the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association,
calls the map "a national treasure." She is upset about the map being retired. "Do you know how many thousands of
school kids have seen that map in the past 40 years? The things that they will be most likely to take away from their
Gettysburg experience are the monuments and the map." John Latschar, superintendent of the Gettysburg National
Military Park, agrees that the map is "an icon of its age," but describes the map as "one hundred percent antiquated."
He adds that, "From an architectural standpoint, it takes up an immense amount of space."' For more on this story see,
for example, the Civil War Librarian blog for 24 March 2008. [Update: 7 May 2008. A website has been set up by Jon Dekeles of Post Falls, Idaho
to gather support for saving the map.]
More about the 1964-65 World’s Fair terrazzo map
Large Blaeu globes sold for a record sum
Collecting tips from a US road map collector
The new Tampa Bay History Center is to receive part of the Touchton map collection
1833 map of Covington, Louisiana to be preserved
Map-inspired exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society
Call for the Bodleian's Gough Map to be put on permanent display
'"Schoolchildren from Oxfordshire will benefit from purpose-built facilities so they can engage with some of the Bodleian's treasures," Mr
Ovenden said. Earlier this month, he warned that the renovation project, which is expected to start in 2010 and finish in 2012, would
only happen if the Bodleian could free up space in the library, by building a £29m book depository on the Osney Mead industrial estate.
Official survey records lost in a fire in Pakistan
'There were also records of other cities in Sindh, said Syed Anwar Hyder, a senior member of the Board of Revenue. An official of the
city survey department said on conditions of anonymity that records of the land allocated during the tenure of former Sindh CM Dr Arbab
Ghulam Rahim were also burnt. This claim was rejected by Hyder. When asked why such valuable material was kept in such a building, he
replied that the records had been safe for a century and there was no reason to move them. He also rejected arson. "It could have been a
short circuit, but we have yet to investigate that," Hyder said. "It was a public holiday and almost all the offices were closed and only
a few officials came in the morning to do some important work," he said. "The fire broke out all of a sudden in the record room located
on the rooftop of the office of the superintendent of the city survey."'
Also another article in the same issue: < http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\03\21\story_21-3-2008_pg12_1 >
'Records go up in flames at Secretariat' (by Faraz Khan)
The two accounts leave many questions unanswered (usual with a major fire), as officials seek to pass the blame. See the related
entry (in the 2007 archive, under 1 October) about early maps found in plastic sacks on the roof of
the Karachi Municipal Archives and Research Department.
Details are awaited about Belgian digital initiative
Library opens in Berkeley with a major collection of Japanese maps
Preview of 'Maps: Finding Our Place in the World'
Champlain vividly remembered
Map used for the last lunar landing up for auction
The Baltimore 'Festival of Maps' has its own microsite for maps
New book displaying the map treasures of the National Library of Australia
A 17th-century Dutch wall-map found stuffed up a Scottish chimney
David Rumsey to give this year's OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture
David Rumsey launches his 'islands in Second Life'
Interdependent maps and text of 18th century Cheshire estates reunited
The history of Berlin focusing on contemporary maps
Claim that maps provide oldest evidence of Jewish ghettos in Italy
Uncatalogued map of Hampton, New Hampshire donated to the 'wrong' town
Two examples of a 1862 wall-map of Will County, Illinois made into one
The recently discovered first map of Namibia to go on display
Pemberton's maps of Vancouver Island to be put on the web
A major Italian archive digitised at UCLA
'The Rome-based Orsini have been one of Italy’s leading families since the Middle Ages, when they acquired extensive lands across
the central and southern parts of the country. Comparable in power and influence to the Medici family, the Orsini produced three
popes, 28 cardinals and 33 Roman senators and were crucial players in the complicated power-game of Italian politics during some
of the most tumultuous times in the country’s history'.
The collection of Orsini parchments at the Archivo Storico Capitolano
in Rome 'will soon be available on-line'.
Part of the 'world's largest road map' to go on display
Another source, 'New York State Pavilion (1964-1965
World's Fair)' describes it as 'an oversized map of the state of New York, which is made up of 567 mosaic terrazzo panels
weighing about 400 lbs. each, largely covers its floor. The map is said to have cost one million dollars at the time, and displays
the locations of all Texaco gas stations in the state of New York ... the world’s largest road map.' They sadly conclude that the
map is 'beyond repair'. Other pictures here.
New study of the Gough Map (c. 1360)
Some of the maps being donated to the University of Virginia by Seymour Schwartz go on display
A special library opens in Ho Chi Minh City to deal with territorial disputes
Original plan of a Civil War fort found
Two (actually three) claimants to be the first map to name 'America'
Now look forward to Baltimore's "Festival of Maps"
Conservation needed for official maps of New York City dating back to 1748
The city of Vienna puts its cartographic history online
The Washington Post looks at the Field exhibit
Now there is to be a 'Festival of Maps' in Baltimore as well
Early cartography used in the dispute over the Spratly Islands
Claim that Korean bank note contains altered map of 1861
Place-name battle for 'Persian Gulf': a book, an encyclopedia and a film
'The joint work of the Iranology
Foundation and the Iranian Academy of Persian language and Literature entitled "The Persian Gulf in Historical Maps"
was unveiled at the Iranology Foundation Sunday.' The various co-authors are quoted thus: '"Since the ancient times,
those who knew the world have called ‘Persian Gulf’ the water passageway which separates the Arabian Peninsula from
the land of Iran. ‘Sinus Persicus’, ‘Persischer Golf’, and ‘Golfo di Persia’ were some of the other terms used to
refer to this passageway. But when Arab nationalists took power in Egypt in early 1950s, some began to use the term
‘Arab Gulf’. Iran has expressed its opposition since."... "The book tolerantly discusses all differing points of
views, political propaganda and abuse of the term ‘Persian Gulf’"..."The atlas contains 40 maps from the pre-Islamic
and early Islamic era; the atlas derives its content from a wide array of sources, the major one being Istakhri’s "Al-
Masalik al-Mamalik" (The Book of Roads and Kingdoms)"... "We use of an old Islamic system for describing maps which
had been forsaken for a long time. Actually we have tried to revive this old tradition"..."We selected 160 out of a
total of 400 original maps. Our main criteria was the quality of the maps. The interesting point is that nowhere in
the maps the name of the gulf could be found without the prefix ‘Persian’."' One of the authors is shown holding the
book. It is not clear if the atlas has 40 or 160 maps. Is it permissible to wonder about the 240 that were not chosen,
given that some earlier maps certainly use other terms to designate the Persian Gulf?
'The oldest known map of
one of North Yorkshire's most beautiful valleys has been saved for posterity by the county council. The map depicting Swaledale
was drawn in about 1707 to settle a dispute over the ownership of lead mining rights. It was bought by the council’s County
Records Office, based in Northallerton, in February for £1,000 and will be kept in carefully controlled conditions ... The map
reveals previously unavailable information about the size and location of settlements and access rights on the moor, including
the right to graze stock, gather heather - which was used for thatch - and dig peat, which was used for fuel.' The original
hand-drawn map measures 35 inches (89 cm) and is drawn on vellum. A copy has been presented to Swaledale Museum in Reeth, for
public access.
'The Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin has been awarded a
"Save America's Treasures" federal grant to support the conservation and general preservation of the Stephen F. Austin Papers. The
$173,930 grant was awarded by the National Park Service, which administers the prestigious "Save America's Treasures" program in
collaboration with the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. It will fund a three-year conservation project to repair
and stabilize the Austin Papers, considered the most significant collection documenting Anglo-American colonization in Texas ...
The collection contains the personal and official records of Moses Austin and his son, Stephen F. Austin. The papers, which span
the years 1676-1873, were created or gathered by Stephen F. Austin beginning in 1821, the year he initiated his colonization
efforts in Texas ... Treasures in the papers include significant letters and maps'.
Commentary to a 21 minute film, which can be seen here <
http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/videopod/default.aspx?id=26627 >. It was apparently broadcast from New Delhi on April 10th. This
describes the work of William Lambton and George Everest in tracing the Great Indian Arc of the Meridian, in the period 1802-43. 'It looks at
what motivated the British to undertake such extensive mapping of India in the first place. To what extent were these maps necessary for
expansion of the empire, and to what extent were these devices with which to access remote areas of India to see what they had to offer which
was of commercial benefit to the East India Company are questions the film addresses.'
About the exhibition devoted to Ma Zu, goddess of the sea, held at the National Museum of History in downtown Taipei,
from March 2-23. The exhibition is therefore closed, but the following passage seemed interesting. 'One of the highlights of the exhibition was a 2.7-meter
long and 0.9-meter wide horizontally inscribed board. Loaned from Ciyou Temple--literally meaning protected by kindness--in Sinjhuang City, Taipei County,
the relic has been in the temple since 1778 during the Ching dynasty (1644-1912). Differing from most boards that bear moral and ethical inscriptions,
Ciyou's relic announces the details of a court action over a contested land title brought by two intellectuals named Li Wu-hou and Li Wei-jhi. The wooden
tablet also includes detailed descriptions and maps of the area. "This is not a common tablet that could be found in an old temple because it served as a
judicial decree as well as a historic artifact," Chairman Lin Tao-hung of Ciyou Temple said during the opening ceremony of the Cultural Exhibition of
Taiwan's Goddess Ma Zu in the NMH.'
'This Sunday will be the last day to visit the beloved
Gettysburg Electric Map. Soon afterwards, the historic map will be cut into four pieces before being stored in a
nearby Civil War-era barn. Park Service officials have yet to decide upon a new venue for the 60 year-old, one-of-a
kind, 30 x 30 foot [9 x 9 metres] map. Relatives of the maps creator, Joseph Rosensteel, and visitors who view the map
as a national treasure, are worried about the map's future.
Further on the "half-acre
terrazzo road map of New York State from the 1964-65 World’s Fair - an exuberantly overstated mix of small-town parochialism, space-age optimism and Pop Art
irony", which it is hoped may be preserved. A small section is on display at the Queens Museum of Art until 4 May in the exhibition, Back on the Map: Revisiting the New York State Pavilion at the 1964-65 World’s Fair. [For an earlier
entry, with links to additional illustrations, see the archive for 31 January 2008.]
Interview with the past president of the Road Map Collectors Association, a retired picture editor who 'lives in New Jersey with
his wife and more than 12,000 road maps'.
About the 'Spanish exploration exhibit at the $52 million Tampa Bay History Center in Florida, which is scheduled to open in December in the Channel
District', and the maps belonging to J. Thomas Touchton, president of the Witt-Touchton Co., an investment firm. Touchton 'has collected
some 2,000 maps of Florida, from colonial Spain to early 20th century road maps. "Just by accident, I have put together over 25 years what
dealers tell me is the largest collection of Florida maps in the world not in a museum or library," says Touchton, the history center's
founding president who led the fundraising campaign to build and endow the new 60,000-square-foot facility. A prized possession is a 1622
edition of a 1601 Spanish map. "It's the first known printed map in history with the name 'Tampa' on it," he says. Over the next several
years, Touchton will donate most of his collection to the history center. A number of unique items will be on display at the map center,
which will have an adjacent map library so people can study them.'
'Covington officials, at the urging of former city
councilwoman Pat Clanton, are moving to permanently preserve the oldest known map of the city in the regional archives of Southeastern
Louisiana University in Hammond. The map, entitled "Commerce and Virtue the Division of St. John Covington," dates back to 1833 and once
belonged to Clanton's grandfather, Emile Frederick Sr., who was the city's eighth mayor in 1891 and 1892. It was later given to the city by
family member Harold Burns, Clanton's first cousin, during the administration of the late mayor Ernest J. Cooper in the early 1970s. The
cloth map, encased in a gold frame, has been displayed on the walls of the mayor's office since then until the September 2006 fire at City
Hall. It's now in a closet at the Greater Covington Center. Clanton said she became concerned about the map in 2005 when then City Council
Clerk Lynne Moore discovered that the map was gradually fading. Clanton said she recently talked to Southeastern history professor Samuel
C. Hyde Jr., director of the university's Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies and Archives. The center is willing to permanently store
and preserve the document under a donation or loan agreement with the city, Clanton said.'
'One of the most important maps ever made in
Britain should be placed on display, according to a key member of staff at Oxford University's Bodleian Library. The Gough Map, which
dates from about 1360, is the earliest surviving map of Great Britain to show routes across the UK and to depict the island with a
recognisable coastline. Richard Ovenden, keeper of special collections at the Bodleian, believes the map is such an important historical
document that it should be on display for the public. He said the map was high on the list of items the library hoped to display,
following a £5m donation from Julian Blackwell, to pay for ambitious redevelopment plans.'
'The city’s records [of Karachi],
some over a century old, were burnt in the fire at the Board of Revenue Sindh building early Thursday morning. These records included
165-year-old historical and administrative records such as city surveys, maps, measurements, locations of all major arteries, small
lanes, roads, temples, churches, mosques, graveyards, amenity plots, hospitals, government schools, public parks, railway tracks, tombs
and shrines of saints, cow grazing spots, potable water ponds, government offices and all other places for which the government has
allotted land. "In the colonial era when Bombay (Mumbai) was part of Sindh, the British government directed for the first time for a city
survey at the grass-roots level in 1843," said an official who said he was not authorized to speak. "The survey was continued till 1911.
During it, the revenue team measured every inch of the land of Sindh." ...
'Important records of the surveys and land revenue
department were destroyed Thursday after several government department offices, including the Board of Revenue building, were gutted in
an inferno that erupted at the Sindh Secretariat. The decades-old building was established in 1836, during the British government, and is
located opposite the Sindh Home Department, a short distance from the Sindh High Court. A four-member investigation team has been formed
on the directives of the Sindh chief minister to probe the incident.'
'On March 14th, 2008 four Belgian federal institutions announced
their common project to digitize their map collections. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any substantial information about it, except for
some small articles in the Belgian press. The websites of the four institutions remain silent. Nevertheless, the expectations run high,
since considerable sums of money are being mentioned. The four institutions are:
Joost Depuydt is in charge of maps, drawings and prints at the FelixArchief (City Archives) in Antwerp. [Update 26 March: the text of the article
from Le Soir, 15-16 March 2008, is availabe on the
BIMCC site (click on the illustration.]
'The campus fanfare swirling around the opening today of
UC Berkeley's new $46.4 million C.V. Starr East Asian Library highlights
the building's Asian-influenced architecture and especially its airy spaciousness. Much is made of it being the first freestanding
library devoted to East Asia at any American university ... The rare items housed in the library will not be available until after the
rare-book room opens on July 1 and will also require advance notice and special permission.' Among the 'gems' is 'a collection of 2,500
historic Japanese maps said to be the largest and most comprehensive outside of Japan'. The piece gives background information on the
nature and origin of the library's collections, which include significant holdings of Chinese and Korean material. [See an earlier note
about this library on 16 October 2007.]
A preview of the centrepiece in Baltimore's Festival of Maps, the exhibition at the Walters Art
Museum. 'Maps: Finding Our Place in the World' opens on Sunday (16 March). Various people give their comments,
including members of the Washington Map Society.
The Director of the John Carter Brown Library introduces an exhibit curated by the JCB,
"Champlain's America: New England and New France," showing at the Boston Public Library (March 13 to May 31).
Celebrating the 400th anniversary of Quebec's foundation by Samuel de Champlain in 1608, the author reflects on
his broadly forgotten achievements, for example in the discovery and mapping of much of the New England coast
before the Mayflower arrived. Widmer's elegant piece is well worth reading. [Note: elsewhere the exhibit title
is given as "Before New England: Champlain’s America".]
Heritage Auction Galleries are
offering the complete, 18-panel lunar chart produced for the last landing on the moon. This example was used by
the mission Commander Gene Cernan, for navigating down to the surface. It notes where the lunar module was to
land on 11 December 1972. The item is in an online sale, due to close on 24 March, with an estimate of
$125,000-150,000.
Announcing a new publication, Australia in Maps,
'a book of 52 great pieces of cartography from the library's collection of more than 1 million rarities, charts
and aerial photographs ... The curator of maps, Martin Woods, concedes that the book - begun by his predecessor,
Maura O'Connor, and more than 25 years in the making - barely scratches the surface of the library's collection.
"But it's a start, an important part of the process of revealing more of our treasures, of our great stories, to
the public. Funds are being raised to increase the library's maps display area, now so small that fewer than 10
items can be shown at once. And Dr Woods and his team have begun the huge task of digitising the collection for
the library's website'. [Via The Map Room weblog].
The latest issue of Cairt, the newsletter of
the Scottish Maps Forum (issue 12, February 2008, pp.7-8), has the interesting story of an example of Valck &
Schenck's wall-map of the world (no. 544 in Rodney Shirley's The Mapping of the World), whose royal arms
of William & Mary place it in the period 1689-94. The large rolled map (166 x 227 cm/65x89in), on its original
linen backing, was found 'stuffed up a chimney' in a house in north-east Scotland. The builder involved gave it
to a friend, rather than putting it in a skip, and from there it found its way to the National Library of
Scotland. Not surprisingly, the map is in appalling condition, but part of the double-hemisphere design, the
ornamental borders and the strips of town view can be seen. Only one complete example is recorded, in Rotterdam.
'David Rumsey, an historical map scholar and
collector, will share how he turned his private map collection, one of the largest in the U.S., into a public
resource at the second annual OCLC/Frederick G. Kilgour Lecture in Information and Library Science on Wednesday,
March 19, 2008. Rumsey, president of Cartography Associates and Chairman of Luna Imaging, Inc., will present [as
a free public lecture], "Turning Private Collections into Public Resources Using Digital Technologies and the
Internet" in the Auditorium of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union on the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill campus at 2 p.m.' The release includes biographical notes and examples of two of his recent
incursions into social networking: Google Earth and Second Life [on which see 'Historical Maps in Second Life: David
Rumsey's antique maps feature in an innovative build in the virtual world' by Erica Naone in Technology
Review, 29 February, and the preceding entry.]
'David Rumsey took his historical map
collection, one of the largest private map collections in the U.S., into virtual worlds today with the launch of
the Rumsey Maps islands in Second Life ... '"Virtual worlds are the logical next step for my collection," said
David Rumsey. "I've digitized over 17,000 maps at full resolution, which I am providing free for use on my site,
and my maps have been featured as layers in both Google Earth and Google Sky. Using a virtual world allows me to
create new ways of experiencing these maps in avatarized form and at unprecedented scale, for both learning and
entertainment."' Five sample maps are briefly described.
A heartening story of how luck and detective
work led to a volume of 1762 estate plans by John Probert of the village of Wybunbury near Nantwich, Cheshire being reunited in the
County Archives with their 'book of reference'. While the maps were handsome, they were of limited use without the accompanying
text, which supplied the details of 'tenants, field names, acreages, rents etc.' Taken together, 'the documents and maps provide an
accurate view of land use, the residents, tenants, fields, buildings and their uses, covering over 9,500 acres.' The maps had been
cut out of the volume perhaps a century ago.
'As part of a collaboration between a
number of universities over many years, Professor of Germanic languages [at UCLA] Todd Presner’s project HyperCities, a Web-based
platform that shows Berlin as it evolves over centuries, has won a grant totaling $238,000 from the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation. The award will be presented today to Presner at a day-long convention in Chicago for the 17 winners.
Recipients were selected from 1,010 applications for the first-ever Digital Media and Learning Competition run by the Humanities,
Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory and funded by the MacArthur Foundation ... The project now covers the 800-year
history of Berlin through maps from the past ... With the grant money, the team hopes to expand the project to include Los Angeles,
Rome and Lima.'
'Secret documents from the archives of the Holy Inquisition
today went on public show for the first time in Rome - though not the instruments of torture used to extract confessions from
heretics ... Marco Pizzo, co-curator of the exhibition with Monsignor Alejandro Cifres, head of the Congregation's archives, said
the sixty documents on display at the Vittoriano Museum on Piazza Venezia in the centre of Rome included a collection of maps of
Jewish settlements across Italy, "the oldest evidence we have of the ghettos"'. The exhibition, 'Rari e preziosi. Documenti dell'età
moderna e contemporanea dagli archivi del Sant'Uffizio', runs until 16 March only. One of the talks in an associated three-day
conference (21-23 February) is by Micaela Procaccia (Direzione generale per gli Archivi, Roma): 'Universitas hebreorum, Keillah
qadosh: gli archivi per la storia degli ebrei in Italia' < http://w3.uniroma1.it/dsmc/notizie/allegati/Conv_inquisizione.doc
>. [There does not seem to be a webpage for the exhibition.]
The hand-drawn map of Hampton, dated from internal evidence to about 1830, 'was discovered rolled up
in a tube in the North Hampton Public Library, mistakenly donated to the wrong town 20 years ago and never
catalogued.' It has now been transferred to the Hampton Historical Society, which will try to obtain funding
for conservation and scanning. The map is "like a slice of history nobody knew existed". Each house is shown,
'oriented in its true direction, and labeled in small script with the owner's name'. The moral of the tale
would be obvious to the map cataloguers of the world.
'Nobody is sure how long the old maps had been in that forgotten cast iron vault [in
the country archive room], nothing but twine and luck holding them together. It wasn't until officials delicately unfurled the
crumbling relics that the significance of the discovery came to light: a Civil War-era snapshot of Will County, and its movers and
shakers, in remarkable detail.' The maps, though not identified as such, are presumably examples of S.H. Burhans and J. Van
Vechten's, 'Map of Will County, Illinois' (1862). Finding two examples of the same map, both in poor condition, allowed conservators
to 'cannibalise' one to provide the sections missing in the other. 'The 4-foot-by-5-foot map [122 x 152 cm] is the showcase piece of
"The Origins of Will County" exhibit that begins Friday in Lockport, chronicling the lives of the county's early pioneers, business
leaders and important figures in the throes of the Industrial Age.' [See further, 'Piecing together the past. Careful work helps
rebuild old map of Will County' by Louise Brass in the Herald News, 22 February <
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/lifestyles/801443,6_1_NA22_MAPS_S1.article >.]
An exhibition of early maps of Namibia is to be held at the National Art
Gallery of Namibia, 'next Friday and will run until March 20'. This will display the maps and other materials (some of which
contain valuable ethnographic detail) produced by the Swede, Charles John Andersson in 1851-67. The two maps he compiled were
'sent to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden. The second map showed what is today northern Botswana and southern
Zimbabwe with the Zambezi River. The waterfall Mosi-oa-Tunya is featured on the map which was made three years before Dr David
Livingstone visited the Falls for the first time (1855) ... The Namibian map is the first map ever made of central and northern
Namibia.' The unpublished maps were found only recently in Sweden. 'In addition to displaying the two unique maps, the exhibitors
intend to bring forward and discuss the fact that the African people participated to a great extent with information and sketches
in the production of the early maps, as well as guiding and leading the European, American and Asian explorers. This fact was
hardly ever mentioned in the representations that the explorers did in their home countries about their discoveries in Africa.'
'Five original hand-coloured maps
of Vancouver Island circa 1855-9 made by the colony’s surveyor-general, Joseph D. Pemberton' are among material from the
University of Victoria’s Special Collections and Archives that are to be put on the web. This is possible because of a grant from
the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, marking the 150th anniversary of British Columbia. The scans will be made
available on the library's image display system.
The Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA) announces online access to the extensive
archive of the Orsini family ranging from 1150 to 1950, acquired in 1964. 'Much of the material concerns property administration,
including maps, registers, plans, inventories of houses and palaces, appointments of personnel, and reports from estate
managers'. The 'Maps and Plans' search option
provides access to 132 images of maps, plans, and other documents, enlargeable to high resolution via Zoomify.
'A much loved road map is going indoors
- and then underground. New Yorkers will have the chance to view the famous paved Texaco Map from the 1964 World's Fair as
portions of it are deconstructed and preserved before their eyes. Conservationists have combined their technical efforts with an
exhibition exploring the history of the map, the World's Fair and the pop art movement at the Queens Museum of Art. The
exhibition lasts from Jan. 27 to May 4 ... The exhibit also includes photographs comparing the map's condition in 1964, the '90s
and the present day, as well as a photo mosaic of the map in its current state by artist Anthony Auerbach, who documented the
entire surface of the terrazzo map from a height of seven feet. As the photographs and the tiles themselves show, decades of
neglect, weather and vandalism have taken their toll ... Preserving the tiles is a complicated process that involves removing the
600-pound tiles, taking out all the old, rusting iron supports, filling in missing spaces on the face, and replacing the support
with a honeycomb matrix.' Ten of the tiles (covering Long Island) will be conserved and exhibited. For the rest, fund-raising
will be needed. [See further The Map
Room, 3 February 2008.]
A sketchy piece about today's publication by the
Bodleian Library, Oxford of Nick Millea's The Gough Map: The Earliest Road Map of Great Britain. Publication details can
be found via Amazon.
This is the first study for fifty years of this highly important map. [For further comment and links see Oxford University
Library Services Press Release, 1 February 2008.]
Previewing the exhibition due to open on 28 January at the
Harrison Institute/Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. It will
run throughout 2008. It comprises 'about 50 of America’s oldest and rarest maps', part of a collection running to 225 items,
pledged to the University of Virginia Libraries by Dr. Seymour I. Schwartz. A map room is being named tomorrow (26th) in his
honour. Schwarts is the author, inter alia, of The Mismapping of America and Putting America on the Map. The brief
article also explains how he started collecting. See also the press release: <
http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/press/schwartz/index.html >.
Another move in the dispute
between Vietnam and China over ownership of the Spratly Islands. 'A library containing documents about Truong Sa (Spratly), Hoang
Sa (Paracel) islands, and the East Sea has been opened in HCM City to enable studies by those interested in the subject. It has
over 100 documents including books written in Chinese and old maps. All the documents will also be available online soon.' [For an
earlier post on this topic see under 4 January 2008.]
The
'discovery of a Civil War map behind a framed Western print could be worth thousands of dollars.' A disintegrating frame bought 20
years ago proved to contain also a hand-drawn plan of Fort Abbott, 'one of five Civil War "star forts" built in Virginia, designed
to keep Confederate troops from stealing Union Army cattle ... A Virginia museum curator was able to identify minor details on the
map that indicate it was drawn by someone who was there. How the map came to Kansas remains a point of speculation.' Apparently
the fort did not play a prominent role in the Civil War.
As a diversion from seeing who is
going to be first in US politics, the media are putting up alternative champions for inventing the name 'America'. The Library of
Congress's recently acquired Waldseemüller map is regularly referred to as 'America's birth certificate'. Now the Providence
Journal puts forward (again) the claim of its own celebrated institution, the John Carter Brown Library, which bought a smaller
Waldseemüller world map in 1901, just before the wall-map was discovered in Germany. Since there is no direct evidence, the
debate is open to all. Just to help this along, it is worth reminding the participants about the globe gores in Minnesota's James
Ford Bell Library, included in their exhibition last October, entitled "The Map that Named America, 1507-2007". That is not
mentioned in the current article. [But see the News
Archive for 27 September 2007.]
Details are beginning to emerge about the successor
to last year's (and continuing) Festival of Maps in Chicago, to be held in Baltimore, March 16 - June 8, 2008. Keep an eye on the
site because, no doubt, more will be added in the next two months.
Manhattan borough is responsible for
preserving all the official maps of New York County dating back to 1748. The Map Room of the Topographical Bureau contains '4,000
maps, 800 of which are being targeted for major restoration'.
Today, the city of Vienna 'presented a new online cultural data bank providing
information about history, artworks, archeology and about a third of the city's buildings. The digital cadastral map gives access to information on 55,000 of
Vienna's 160,000 buildings via current and historical maps.' The GIS functions relate just to the modern maps, but select
'Stadtgeschichte - Karten vor 1850' [History of the city - maps pre-1850] for 8 maps (the earliest 1547, and including the
9 parts of the Carl Graf Vasquez plan of 1830), each with
commentary and enlargeable to high resolution.
Prompted by the Field
Museum exhibit in Chicago, and the successor exhibit due to open in Baltimore, this has contributions from, among others, Barry MacLean,
Matthew Edney and Michael Conzen.
An old article by a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, is
resurrected on a blog entitled, 'Campaign to
Defend Vietnam from Chinese Expansionism in SE Asia'. The article examines (supposedly objectively) the evidence of early
charts.
'The Korean government has decided to use an image of
Kim Jeong-ho's 1861 Korean map, "Daedong Yeojido," on their new 100,000 won bank notes, but instead of using a true image of the
famous map, the government will be adding the island of "Dokdo" (Liancourt Rocks), which did not appear on the original map or on
any old Korean map. This seems to be yet another example of the Korean government's use of deceit to try to convince Koreans and
others that Dokdo was Korean territory.' As with all reports of current territorial disputes that use early maps in evidence, the
intention here is not to comment on the accuracy of any claim but to warn of the dangers (if true) of the propagandist use of old
maps. This is the second time that an accusation has come from a Japanese source that an old map has been tampered with in Korea
[see 'Sea of Japan/East Sea controversy enlivened by claim that original map was altered', filed under 1 March 2007]. One of the comments on the post above discusses what was shown on other
maps by Kim Jeong-ho.