The Map Room

The British Cartographic Society has a new blog. Via @worldmapper.

Another online forum about maps — The Cartographers’ Guild — with a decided focus on fictional maps.

The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs — all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

Although we specialize in maps of fictional realms, as commonly used in both novels and games (both tabletop and role-playing), many Guild members are also proficient in historical and contemporary maps. Likewise, we specialize in computer-assisted cartography (such as with GIMP, Adobe apps, Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, etc.), although many members here also have interest in maps drafted by hand.

Thanks to Rob Miller for the link.

The Road Map Collectors Association’s 2007 annual meeting and map expo will take place September 21-22 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Few details available as yet, but, they say, “We expect to have displays of rare Texas maps, courtesy of the Texas Map Society and, furthermore, we are exploring the possibility of a Saturday evening dinner with speaker(s) from the Texas Map Society.” Via Maps-L.

The North East Map Association’s annual meeting for 2007 will take place June 7-8 at SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology campus in New York City. Via Maps-L.

If you follow such things, you’ll know that Ning, which allows people to build their own social-networking sites, released a new iteration recently; Linda Shippert writes to announce that she’s used it to build a site for map librarians.

Kim Martineau, the Hartfort Courant reporter who filed many excellent stories about the Forbes Smiley map theft case, will be a guest speaker at the November 16th meeting of the Washington Map Society; she’ll also be speaking to the New…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Annalee Newitz reports on the inaugural San Francisco geowankers’ meeting for Alternet (reprinted at Metroactive). Via All Points Blog; see also Boing Boing. (Updated 5:27 PM.) See previous entry: Geowanking….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Another Flickr group: Old Maps. Featuring scans of. See previous entries: Flickr Geotagging Group; Art of the Road; Feel Small Project; Flickr Users’ Map Photos. See also Map Site Directory: Flickr….  •  Continue reading this entry.

If you’re sick of hearing about Google Earth and would like to hear more about NASA World Wind, have I got a blog for you: The Earth Is Square. It’s not dedicated to World Wind per se, but it’s frequently…  •  Continue reading this entry.

If you use LibraryThing to catalogue your books online, you might want to join the Maps and Atlases group, which I just created there….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A few upcoming meetings to tell you about from both the technical and historical side of mapping: This weekend: The Texas Map Society’s spring meeting takes place from March 31 to April in, I guess, several locations in west Texas….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Significant Blogspot outages rendered several favourite mapping blogs unavailable for portions of last weekend, including Cartography and GeoCarta. The city of North Platte, Nebraska, its police department, and surrounding Lincoln County all use different GIS and CAD software to generate…  •  Continue reading this entry.

As an experiment, a lot of new links at once: A new Google Earth blog with a rather unwieldy title: Using Google Earth for Earth Science and Remote Sensing (via Ogle Earth). The Prejudice Map is built by querying Google…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Tony Campbell writes, in response to this post, “I was surprised to see that you hadn’t been using Maps-L. I had taken it for granted that you were on it. I itemise the map lists of which I’m aware at…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Found another mailing list. MAPS-L: MAPS-L Maps and Air Photo Systems Forum is an international discussion forum for Librarians dealing with cartographic information, cartographers, remote sensors, geographers, and cartomaniacs of all types. The subject that ties everything together is cartographic…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A few quick links for the Map Site Directory: Via MapHist, I’ve learned about the British Cartographic Society and its journal, The Cartographic Journal. ArcDeveloper is a new blog that should be of interest to ESRI GIS developers. Via Spatially…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives is the professional organization for map librarians and cartographic archivists in Canada; their web site lists their published maps and books, and has some resources for map cataloguing. I’ve volunteered to catalogue…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The North American Cartographic Information Society’s 2005 annual meeting takes place in Salt Lake City on October 12-15. John Krygier reports that David Rumsey (about whom see previous entries: 1, 2) will be the keynote speaker, “which is a great…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Denver is going to be a busy place for map lovers this month. The International Map Collectors’ Society’s symposium takes place between September 18 and 23, and is held in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Map Society’s antique map fair,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cartotalk is an online forum for cartographic professionals, with lots about map design….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cartography is the blog of (or for) the Canadian Cartographic Association; it’s also good reading for “other individuals interested in all things cartographic,” writes Paul Heersink, who submitted this link. It’s been running since April; its choice of topics has…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The International Antiquarian Map Sellers Association, founded in 2002 to “promote the professional trade in antiquarian, collectible maps and related books,” has a code of ethics; given recent events, see especially section 3. Not that professional sanctions have ever been…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The web site of the Western Association of Map Libraries includes a handy page linking to map collections, mostly in university libraries, in its coverage area (via mapping.com)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

More on geotagging, Geobloggers and Flickr: there’s now a geotagging group on Flickr that discusses ways and means of incorporating location metadata into Flickr photos. Via Google Maps Mania. See previous entries: Automating Geotagging, Google Maps Plus Flickr….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Roadmap Art of the Road is a Flickr group that shares “scanned images from vintage roadmaps from gas stations, municipalities and the like.” The focus is on the cover art, not the cartography, but it’s still of interest. See previous…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Yet another riff on Google Maps on Flickr: the Feel Small Project, wherein participants take screenshots of their location on Google Maps satellite imagery at every zoom level, then build a slideshow that zooms from the tightest to the widest…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Since its launch a little less than three months ago, Google Maps has generated more buzz than any other mapping site since I’ve been paying attention to them. Adding satellite photos only made it worse. That buzz can be measured…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Tony Campbell sends along a link to a comprehensive online directory of map societies from around the world. For the most part, these are historical societies with a curatorial or collector’s bent. This will keep me busy updating the Communities…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A couple of new map-related tribes on Tribe.net: Map Creators Unite, which looks like it’s focused on dedicated amateurs rather than GIS professionals; and Surveying, for land surveyors. An older tribe that I missed: Geocaching. They’ve all got RSS feeds….  •  Continue reading this entry.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Flickr lately. Here are all the photos that Flickr users have tagged with the keyword “maps”. Not only that, but you can get them in an RSS or Atom feed, too….  •  Continue reading this entry.