Tag: map preservation

The World Turned Upside Down and Other Globes: A Roundup

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The World Turned Upside Down, a 13-foot globe sculpture by Mark Wallinger, on the campus of the London School of Economics, surrounded by a few passersby with cameras. The globe shows political borders; the South Pole is at the top. Photo by Geoff Henson, used under a Creative Commons licence.
Geoff Henson (Flickr). Creative Commons BY-ND licence.

Mark Wallinger’s World Turned Upside Down, a 13-foot globe on the LSE campus with the South Pole on top, generated controversy (and vandalism) after its unveiling in 2019 for how it handled contested borders: it shows Lhasa as a capital, Taiwan as a separate country, and omitted Palestine. I mean, it’s on a university campus: controversy about such things was inevitable. Via Mappery; more at Atlas Obscura and Brilliant Maps.

Mappery also points to a 19th-century globular clock that shows the sun’s position at noon on the globe, which I find awfully intriguing, which is to say I want one.

The Library of Congress is changing how it stores its rare globes, replacing acrylic vitrines (heavy, bulky, and potentially off-gassing compounds that put the globes at risk) with archival cardboard cases, which are less sexy but more practical—we’re talking about storage, not display. I’m actually surprised that rare globes had essentially been stored in display cases.

Preserving the Maps of Karen Wynn Fonstad

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Wisconsin Public Radio takes up the story of fantasy cartographer Karen Wynn Fonstad (1945–2005), best known for her Atlas of Middle Earth and other fantasy-world atlases. “Fonstad passed away 20 years ago. Now, her husband and her son—both geographers themselves—have embarked on a new quest: to digitize her original maps and find an archive to house them.” Her son spent his spring break week getting as many of her maps as possible scanned at the Robinson Map Library, a task he described as barely scratching the surface.

This follows her belated obituary in the New York Times earlier this year (previously): she may be, finally, having a posthumous moment.

Multispectral Imaging Comes to a 15th-Century Mappamundi

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The Leardo mappamundi, 1452.

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee is bringing in the Lazarus Project to carry out multispectral imaging on a 1452 mappamundi by Giovanni Leardo. This is the oldest map in the collection of the American Geographical Society Library, which is housed at UWM. The Lazarus Project is a portable laboratory that brings multispectral imaging to the artifact, rather than the other way around (artifacts being fragile and all, and the Leardo mappamundi is no exception).

“It’s fascinating to watch for the first 10 minutes,” [Lazarus Project board member Chet] Van Duzer said. “After that, it’s like watching paint dry.” The map will be scanned with at least a dozen frequencies of light, and probably more, ranging from infrared through visible light up to ultraviolet. But in the months after taking the original images, “the real magic is in processing,” Van Duzer said. Different combinations of images at different strengths may reveal faded writing that used various pigments of ink.

Previously: Multispectral Analysis Reveals Lost Details on a 16th-Century Portolan Chart.

Multispectral Analysis Reveals Lost Details on a 16th-Century Portolan Chart

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Excerpt from an enhanced version of Bartolomeu Velho’s portolan chart of the east coast of North America, ca. 1560. Compare with the original. Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress reports on how its Preservation Research and Testing Division used multispectral imaging to bring out previously illegible place names on a 16th-century portolan chart of the east coast of North America. Initially the PRTD was brought in to confirm that the chart was legit before the Library purchased it (which it did last fall), but the faded iron gall ink in some areas of the map suggested obscured details that further analysis could draw out and place names that could be made legible again. According to the article, this represents the first time the Library has posted an enhanced image of one of their holdings.

BNSF’s Map Archives

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

BNSF is one of the largest railways in North America. It’s the end product of a series of rail mergers, and as such it has records for all its antecedent railroads. Including, as an item posted to its website this month reveals, maps, which BNSF is now in the process of digitizing.

Some of the most historically significant maps that BNSF has are maps filed by our predecessor railroads. These maps depicted the beginning of the railroad as we know it, and were often the first official survey of some of the more remote areas of the developing West.

Many of our vital maps were found in boxes or stashed in file cabinets or storage rooms. “We went to 200-plus locations going through thousands, if not tens of thousands of boxes,” said Obermiller of the conversion. “Now we are preserving the most vital maps to ensure we are retaining our vital records and are good stewards of our heritage.”

No word in the piece as to whether those records are available to researchers or the public.