Matthew EdneyI have a new, long-ish post on Alfred Korzybski's use of his map metaphor (nowadays simplified as "the map is not the territory"). And what I now see as its confusions! Enjoy!!
New #maps #cartography #maphistory book … been waiting for this to come out. Braccio has been identifying indigenous maps (some fakes) in the colonial archive. Congratulations, Nathan!!
One of my favorite atlas -- the 1513 Strasburg edition of Ptolemy's Geography, with maps by Martin Waldseemüller, printed by Johannes Schott, with some maps in color!!! - has been imaged by Osher map Library and is available online at https://oshermaps.org/map/4073.0184 (link to this page: Ptolemaic map of the ecumene)
Registration for the next International Conference on the History of Cartography, being held 7–10 June 2026 in Prague and Brno, Czech Republic, is now open. Cheap rate through 15 April 2026; also, low rates for students. Packed program, great exhibitions, wonderful people!
Register online at https://ichc2026.org
I have added a brief post on my #cartography blog — https://www.mappingasprocess.net/blog/2026/2/12/a-surrealist-map-film — about a 1980 film about #maps, effectively advertising the Pompidou Centre’s great exhibition, Cartes et figures de la terre. It’s wonderful, encapsulating much of “postmodernist” arguments re maps … #maphistory
Link to video w/ English subtitles in the post. Enjoy!!
Daniel BellingradtHow barbaric? In the seventeenth-century, European maps still had "BARBARIA" as a part of Africa in them. Barbaria derives from the Arabic term, bilad al-Barbar (land of the Barbar) and was a term contemporarily used mainly for Coastal Northeastern Horn of Africa. 🦁 #earlymodern #maphistory
The #maphistory talk I gave to some hardy Mainers in Harpswell last Saturday, in the middle of a snow storm, about the #mapping of their rocky necks and islands, is now online. Nicely done video by the local community TV station! #cartography #maps
See it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsUezzLbTxE
Enjoy!
Been waiting for this book: said it had shipped before New Year. Finally had brain power to remember to track it. Says it was delivered ten days ago - just found it where packages never usually left, under two storms worth of snow. At least I found it before today’s sleet starts!! Blarg. Have dried it off.
Anyway — new #maphistory #cartography #modernism book!!!
Also - went yesterday to Secret #Maps at the BL - fun show; great intro to the complex nature of maps! Some great jokes hidden in there for map heads, too. #cartography #maphistory
Go if you’re in London before it closes in mid-January
Osher #map #library makes NPR's morning news!!! 6:30 minutes, no less (an eternity in radio!) wowser!!
Listen at https://www.npr.org/2025/12/07/nx-s1-5619794/maps-globes-maine-library
Great summary of the work of the OML team in teaching K-12 and university students and researchers about maps!!
Image of my GEO 370 students examining our current exhibition "Founding Memories"