This past May, Larry Laliberte, GIS/Maps Librarian, and Bonnie Gallinger Information Services & Maps Specialist curated a unique map exhibit on the 4th floor of Cameron Library; the exhibit was built day by day for 31 consecutive days in the month. Thank you to Larry and Bonnie for writing this guide to the exhibit. We invite you to take some time this summer to explore and engage with these fascinating items on display on the map cabinets.
There was a time.
A temporal splay, before we collectively entrusted our soles to the GPS embedded in our phones, that to traverse point-to-point between place-to-place, folk had to ever and anon ask for directions. Even more, they were oft-obliged to remember lengthy depictions that contained roundabouts, switchbacks, and landmark plot twists.
Consider what follows such a tale-o’-the-trail. So let’s attire in spatial troubadour, and dismiss those saturated satellites that Billy Bragg once wished upon.
Navigating to Cameron Library 4th Floor
Entering Cameron Library, and facing the Service desk you are pointed East. Keep moving, but don’t forget to give an acknowledging smile, to the individuals who, with composure and forbearance, engage with library patrons daily. Once you arrive at the East stairs, and elevator, the expedition gets vertical. Climbing over contours, and ascending heights of land you portage to the fourth floor.
As you enter the floor, perform a left shoulder check if you see a space entitled “Donor Wall” containing a 1921 map titled “The Dominion of Canada & Newfoundland. You have rhumblined a correct course and can now pivot to the right. Continue your journey to the North shore of the fourth floor where a wrack line of quarter sectioned map cabinets are arranged under a North West moon that filters natural light. Navigate to the North West cabinet that faces South, the fluxatlas[:] awaits.
Open the first drawer that surmounts Gibraltar, take a directional bookmark (or two), and, if at any time you have a comment, thought, or if inclined, a spatial poem, write it down while aligned with your bookmark to the North, South, East or West. Also, scoop up one of the “Meet the Map” index cards that provide useful prompts to situate, and better comprehend the maps you will encounter. By using “Meet the Map” you can shift from discovery and investigation to interrogation. In keeping with the floor’s official silent designation, in quiet contemplation absorb the spatial collage entitled “Map a-day-in May (a thirty-one cabinet display)”. Slow your pace, jettison the hectic, beguile a while amongst the tactile and visually absorb a wunderkammer of maps, images, articles, books, atlases and if seeking further information scan those utilitarian QR codes that tether you back to the virtual realm. Follow the map cabinets East. At the map cabinet terminus and just past the hanging 3-D plastic relief models perform a U-Turn, and then head Westward where Narnia awaits.
- Were there maps that caught your eye, surprised you?
- Maps and their stories that were uplifting and/or upsetting?
- Were there cartographers, artists and researchers we missed?
- If you were to curate a map cabinet top, what spatial display would you conjure?
Share your answers to these questions and your feedback about this display with Larry Laliberte, GIS/Maps Librarian at data@ualberta.ca.
This content is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons licence.