FAQ

Appraising a Map’s Value

Occassionaly someone writes in to ask me how much a map in their possession is worth. I can’t provide an appraisal of a map’s value over the Internet — I’m not even remotely qualified to do so. And, as Chris pointed out when I posted this question generically, “free appraisals are worth what you pay for them.” Even access to price listings costs money: the Antique Map Price Record is a CD-ROM-based price listing that costs $149 (see previous entry). OldMaps.com has a price finding tool, but it’s by subscription — from $7.95 for a single day to $99.95 a year. It isn’t cheap, but neither are the maps in question, supposedly, so what are you complaining about?

Buying and Selling Maps

Sometimes people confuse me with someone who buys or sells maps. Sometimes people get me confused with the websites I link to, but that’s a related issue. Let me explain: I’m just a guy with a blog. While I frequently link to websites that buy and sell maps, I’m not affiliated with them. You should contact them, not me.

Finding a Map

I receive plenty of requests from people who are looking for a specific map, or a map of a specific location. I’m sorry, but I can’t help with that sort of thing.

Homework Questions (Basic Geography)

Every so often I get what I would call a basic geography question, like the distance between two locations, the capital of a country or some point of geography trivia — something that could very easily be found out by searching the web. I have two university degrees; I really don’t need to work on high school assignments again.

Obtaining a Map I’ve Blogged About

I’ve received several requests asking me how to obtain a high-resolution reproduction or a licensed copy of a map I’ve linked to in one of my entries. I’m never the originator of any map-related material on this site, and can’t provide any assistance. Please contact the owner of the site on which the original map is hosted — though I appreciate that that may not always be possible, I’m no more able to contact them than you are.

Advertising

Because I want to focus on my blogging, and not on selling ads, and because I want to keep editorial and advertising considerations as far apart as possible, I don’t sell advertising space on this site directly. Ads on The Map Room are either Google AdSense or affiliate programs; AdSense ads are determined automatically.

If you want to advertise on The Map Room, you may wish to use Google AdWords, and use site targeting to focus your ads on this site (some of my ad channels are targetable).

The presence of an ad on my site does not represent an endorsement on my part.

Book Reviews

Books submitted for review should have maps, cartography or mapmaking as their primary focus. As an amateur, I am unable to review technical books for programmers or geospatial professionals; historical monographs are fine.

Books may be mailed to the following address:

Jonathan Crowe
PO Box 473
Shawville QC  J0X 2Y0
CANADA

Don’t send books via courier or UPS — they don’t deliver to post office boxes, and the customs and brokerage fees can be usurious. If for some reason you have to ship by courier, please contact me to obtain my street address (which for obvious reasons I will not put on this website).

I can’t promise that I will review every book sent to me, or that I will review it promptly or favourably. Reviews will link to Amazon.com with my associate ID, and I will indicate if I have received a review copy.

I don’t generally solicit publishers for review copies, but books I’m interested in reviewing are listed on The Map Room’s wish list.

Reviews of the following books are in the works — or at the very least I have very good intentions of reviewing them.

See my previous book reviews.

Broken Links

Links are (hopefully) accurate at the time an entry is posted. However, old links expire all the time: newspapers remove stories, websites go dark. With nearly 4,000 entries since 2003, I don’t have enough time to update old entries when their links break. Nor am I entirely sure what to do with an old post when its main link goes dark — you can see how quickly things can unravel if you start pulling at these old threads.

But if there’s a fixable typo in a URL, or a broken internal link, please let me know.

Commenting on an Entry

Comments have been disabled for the time being for technical reasons. (The commenting engine in Movable Type 5 Pro allows for more registration options, but it doesn’t seem to be working for me; a fix is probably beyond my level of blog template expertise.) I think I’ll run without comments for a while and see how it goes. (I’d rather put my energies into posting about maps than moderating comments in any event, not that I’ve ever gotten many.)

In the meantime, if I’ve written something that inspires you to comment, don’t hesitate to contact me, post it on your own blog (send me the link!) or send a tweet to @maproomblog.

Media Inquiries

Note to reporters and producers: when it comes to maps, I’m just an informed observer — not a professional, not an expert, not an insider. Still interested? When contacting me, be sure to tell me how quickly you need me to get back to you. As a former reporter myself, I appreciate your time constraints and will do what I can to help; if nothing else, I will try to tell you promptly that I can’t be of use or can’t help you by your deadline.

If you’re looking for an interview, please indicate the media and whether it will be live/on-air.

Mistaking Me for Someone Else

Sometimes someone contacts me as though I were the author of a article I’ve linked to, say, or the creator of a map I’ve blogged about. Honestly, people, this is just a blog: can you not get straight the difference between the blogger and the content the blogger is linking to?

Promoting Your Product or Service

The Map Room is aimed at a non-professional audience. Unless your product is of sufficient interest to that audience, even to people who don’t buy your product, I won’t write about it. Bottom line, there has to be something of interest beyond your commercial self-interest. Be newsworthy; I don’t provide free advertising.

Site Outages

I report site outages and other technical problems on Twitter (assuming Twitter isn’t also down). My hosting provider, DreamHost, also provides a status blog where downtime is reported.

Fortunately, outages are a lot rarer than they used to be.