The two most common responses I get when I tell people that I’m a map librarian at UC Berkeley are:
I didn’t know that was a job?! and
I love maps!
These are both fair reactions. It’s not a very common job. And maps are very cool. Just like a typical librarian’s work does not involve sitting around reading books all day, though, my job is much larger than just looking at fun maps all the time. The core of my work is actually helping people understand maps better so that they can use and create them. I help everyone from researchers looking at the historical extent of kelp beds along the California coast, to students seeking air quality data in Oakland for their class project, to local residents investigating a property dispute.
My official title is “GIS & Map Librarian” and I have the good fortune to work with great people and wonderful materials. The UC Berkeley Library has one of the largest map collections in California, with around half a million print maps and aerial photographs. The map collection is part of the Earth Sciences & Map Library, which occupies a good portion of the ground floor of McCone Hall near the north side of UC Berkeley’s campus. Due to the odd layout of the library, you have to explore a bit to find the map room, but once you do, you are in for a treat!
UC Berkeley Earth Sciences & Map Library (Photo by Samantha Teplitzky)
The maps in the library’s collection were produced mainly in the 1900s and onward. They are a visual feast and run the gamut from rainbow-colored geological maps to evocative real estate advertising maps to, well, even a map of Sasquatch sightings!
Each map tells many stories: what is conveyed by the data and design, but also the stories of the people who created it, their audience, and the era it came from.
New perspectives on old maps
Sometimes — often — researchers use maps in the library’s collection for purposes which they were not originally intended for. A few years ago a scientist studying California’s kelp used 150-year-old nautical charts from our collection to try to determine where and how big the kelp forests had been in the past. These nautical charts were created by the US government to help guide boats around the coasts and prevent shipwrecks. Mapping the kelp beds made navigation safer, but the cartographers were not interested in kelp’s ecosystem role. Today that information about historical kelp is critical to understanding the past, so that we can make better predictions and choices about the future.
Kelp beds near Santa Cruz, California, shown on 1891 nautical chart
One big project that my library is working on right now has a similar goal of making a collection of historical maps available online for people to use in new ways: maps that were captured from the German military at the end of World War II and redistributed to university libraries across the United States. UC Berkeley has about 20,000 of these maps, which show detailed views of pre-WWII Europe. I am leading a project to describe and digitize the collection, which we’re making available online as we work through the maps (20,000 is a lot!). We are excited to see what people do with the maps — including genealogists, military historians, geographers, and uses we haven’t even thought of yet!
Captured German map
Stamp on a captured German map
Using maps and data
There are many different ways that I try to help people work with and understand maps and geospatial data. Most directly, I consult one-on-one to learn more about their particular questions and help them find the maps, data, or tools they need. I also teach workshops about how to get started with finding geospatial data and creating digital maps. Whenever I talk with people about maps and geospatial data I try to emphasize that they are representations that need to be understood within the context in which they were created or generated. This is important for understanding how to use the maps and data.
It is also important for being able to find maps or data in the first place, and that is a lot of what people come to me for help with. For example, for those students interested in finding air quality data, there are a number of questions we might go through in order to help us find data that they can use for their class research projects.
Oakland air quality map, originally appearing in this article
Where? I know they are interested in Oakland, but do they have a particular neighborhood they are researching? Is it the whole city? Just areas along a freeway?
When? What is the time period that they want data for? Is it just the past year, or a time series of data over the past five or ten years? Do they want to see how the air quality varied throughout the day, or are daily averages okay because they are more interested in seeing how it changes seasonally?
What? Are there particular aspects of air quality that they are interested in? Do they want to map specific pollutants like ozone, or are they interested in particulate matter?
Who? Is there a government agency or private company that might have had an interest in collecting this kind of air quality data? Sometimes a general search can be less effective than finding data from a known source.
After answering all of these questions, I have a better idea of how to help the students find the data they need. And hopefully, the students have a better understanding of how to map and interpret their air quality data.
I love that I get to do so many different things in my work as a map librarian, and that they all relate back to helping people think about their world a bit differently. Really engaging with a map and/or geospatial data can give us a different perspective — literally!
Collection of globes in the map library (photo by Samantha Teplitzky)
Susan Powell is a map & GIS librarian, a Guerrilla Cartography board member, and a new mother (who has recently been re-acquainted with the world of Richard Scarry!).