Article: In 1999, when I first...
In 1999, when I first started researching Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations at the Library of Congress I didn't have a clue about the web. With well-near 200 picture projects under my belt, I was still a find it in a book or picture collection kind of guy. In 1995 when I started working on my first book with the Library, Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States I used the LOC website merely as an orientation tool and a book finder.
As an aside: Why is there so much stuff at the Library of Congress? 4½ million maps, for example? Over 115 million items held in trust for the nation! Because when the original Congressional library of some law books and three maps was burned down in 1812, Jefferson's library was bought to restart the nation's collection and Congress promised to keep the wide-ranging and eclectic pattern Jefferson had set for his collecting in his belief that there should be no subject foreign to our nation's lawmakers.
At the first meeting for Eyes, Ron Grim who was then the cartographic historian at the Library, introduced himself and I said, "I don't get maps." He put his head on the table and said, "That is the story of my life!" Well, Ron made it a point to educate me about maps and to teach me that, in fact, maps can talk if asked the right questions. Each map is a narrative told by its maker. Once I grasped that reality, maps made perfect sense to me. And then I wondered if different cultures produced maps that were unique to themselves. And so Cartographia began.... It was a hands-on experience. We opened drawers and looked at the original maps; we went into various stacks and looked at ancient atlases and scrolls.
Years later, and I do mean years, while I was rewriting the rewrites, my life entered the 21st century. My colleague, Susan Reyburn, saw me struggling through my mounds of books looking for a tidbit factoid. She was already my electronic un-scrambler and retrieval artist. She smiled beatifically and uttered what became my mantra: "The web is our friend." This simple sentence changed my life.
The LOC has for us inhabitants a site called Electronic Research Tools. On it are many major dictionaries, encyclopedias, scholarly journals, reference guides, national histories from around the world. To check a journal from 1855 when Greek studies were flourishing in Germany, I went into the stacks where I found everything. Well, there they were online via ERT! I used four different Google sites to check dates, as well as to decode technical or scientific terms or Chinese atlasas or rainfall statistics, etc., etc., etc..
I would never have completed Cartographia had I not learned how to augment my traditional methods of research with my newest friend, the web. However, I still made the last map in my book a map of the LOC stacks. I mean, first things first! Meanwhile, without Susan Reyburn you would be reading a blank page now...documents still have a way of disappearing....
Copyright © 2007 by Vincent Virga