JANUARY 21, 2012 MEETING

CMS WINTER MEETING PRELIMINARY PROGRAM
RICHARD J. RIORDAN CENTRAL LIBRARY OF THE
LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY,
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2012

FOR CMS MEMBERS:

08:30 CMS Registration, coffee, tea, muffins, etc. (in the Bookends Café within the library)

09:00-9:15 CMS General Membership Meeting (in the Café)

09:15-10:00 CMS Library tour and break

PUBLIC CONFERENCE IN THE TAPER AUDITORIUM BEGINS AT10:00 AM:

10:00-10:20 Welcome, Fred DeJarlais, President CMS, Steve Hicks, Vice President for Southern California, and Dan Dupill, Principal Librarian, Central Library, Los Angeles Public Library

10:20–11:10 Waldo Tobler, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, and recipient of the Osborn Maitland Miller Cartographic Medal of the American Geographical Society. Dr. Tobler is a recognized authority on map projections. Ptolemy wanted correct distances on maps. Mercator changed this to warp maps for use as a nomograph for navigation purposes. These and other map projection transformations for other uses are explored in this presentation on Historic and Current Map Projections. Ask him why the Qibla is 23.85 deg.N. or directly over Dodger Stadium from here.

11:10-12:00 Glen Creason, Map Librarian at the Richard J. Riordan Central Library and author of “Los Angeles in Maps”. Glen will be speaking on Historic Maps of Los Angeles, 1849 to 1956. Glen organized the widely acclaimed map exhibit which led to the publication of his book. He oversees a treasure trove of maps in the basement of this institution.

12:00-1:15 Lunch and Library Exhibition of Los Angeles Historic Maps.

1:15-2:00 Eugene Turner and James Allen, Professors in the Department of Geography, California State University, Northridge and co-authors of The Ethnic Quilt and Changing Faces, Changing Places . Their talk will be Changes in Race and Hispanic Distributions within California, 2000 - 2010. We’ll see the dramatic shifts in California’s population in the last ten years. Drs. Turner and Allen have studied ethnic geography for years and are experts in showing patterns of change in Southern California’s neighborhoods through census data.

2:00–2:45 Greg McIntosh, independent scholar, The Amazing Trek of Portuguese Pilot Moreira from San Francisco Bay to Mexico in 1579-1583. Many factors went into creating the famous cartographic myth of California as an island. The 1510 romantic novel Las Sergas de Esplandian and particularly the map created in 1620 by Antonio de la Ascension. That map and accompanying report were captured by the Dutch. The report told of Noreira’s marooning by Francis Drake and his four year 1500 mile journey on foot. An incredible journey.

2:45–3:00 Break

3:00-4:00 Keith Clarke, Professor, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Getting Started with GIS, Analytical and Computer Cartography and soon to be published Maps and Web Mapping. He will speak on Geography in a Mobile, Wireless World: Webcams, Sensor webs and Rich Geospatial Content. Also known for his “Ask Dr. Map” column in the ACSM Bulletin and lots of spatial skills.

4:00-4:15 Questions and discussion, ending with conclusion of the public meeting.

4:30-5:00 California Map Society Board Meeting (open to all interested parties)

MEETING NOTES

Registration began in the Library’s Bookend Café at 8:30 AM. Members were treated to a tour of the Library by librarian, Glen Creason, who has worked there for many years and would later be one of our speakers. Promptly at 10:00 AM the Library opened to the public and we gathered at the Taper Auditorium, a splendid venue for our meeting.

President Fred DeJarlais and Vice President Steve Hicks opened the meeting and Steve introduced the first speaker, Waldo Tobler, a worldwide recognized expert on map projections. Waldo pointed out that all map projections are like graph paper which can be stretched in various ways to illustrate different points of view. All projections then distort the three dimensional world they purport to display. Road atlas distance tables distort the reality of driving distances. We are all familiar with other examples, such as Mr. Beck’s London Underground map or the New Yorker’s view of the United States quickly diminishing after crossing the Hudson River. We are currently overrun with election cartograms and other value-by-area maps. Waldo went on to illustrate many popular distortions currently in use. In and out population migration maps and specialty maps such as Muslim Qibla maps used to locate Mecca are quite useful, if sometimes almost unreadable to the uninitiated. He finished his demonstration of distortion with his own creation, a “floppy bowtie projection” useful for showing how far fun-loving cartographers will go to confuse even map buffs.

Our next speaker was our erstwhile guide, Glen Creason. Glen has been Map Librarian at LAPL for 22 years andhad earlier shown us the vast collection housed in the basement level. Glen put together an outstanding collection oflocal maps several years ago. This became the foundation of his book, Los Angeles in Maps, published by Rizzoli in 2010. Glen showed us a number of maps from the libraries and his personal collection. From Ord’s survey through Abel Stearn’s properties auction and Hancock and Hansen’s donation lot survey, he wove the history of Southern California through maps. An early map of Belle View Terrace showed the current site of today’s Riordan Library. A very early auto map of 1900 showed a speed limit downtown of 8 MPH. An 1880 map of East Los Angeles showed the first synagogue in that then heavily Jewish neighborhood. Two maps illustrated important Los Angeles developments, the 1912 “Shoestring” map linking Los Angeles to the harbor and the 1913 map showing the completed aqueduct bringing water which allowed further development of Southern California. Laura Whitlock’s 1911 map of the Pacific Electric Interurban system was widely copied which sparked an early copyright battle, won by the intrepid mapmaker. Glen’s subtle humor made this a very enjoyable presentation.

Lunch followed with a chance to view the exhibit of some of the maps from Glen’s book in the current exhibit area and browse through the Library’s book and sundry shop.

The afternoon session kicked off with a presentation by Gene Turner and Jim Allen, both professors at Cal State Northridge and coauthors of The Ethnic Quilt and Changing Faces, Changing Places. They are experts in the study of changing demographics as recorded by the U.S. Census. Although California’s population has traditionally grown by 10% per decade, the last 5 years have shown a net decrease of 100,000 per year despite an increase of 200,000 per year through in-migration. Viewing the 2000-2010 time period, the white population at 14.9 million has shrunk by 5%, while the Hispanic population of 14 million has increased by 28%. Asian population at 4.8 million has increased by 36.5%; the Black population at 2.2% has risen by 1.6%. Riverside County showed a doubling of the Asian population. Blacks disbursed from their traditional central city locations, opening low cost areas for Hispanic in-migration. Hispanic populations doubled in Oxnard, Victorville and the Coachella Valley. Dramatic increases in the Chinese population occurred in the west San Gabriel Valley and in the Armenian population of Glendale. Many
urban areas showed declines in the White population while Delta areas, north Orange Co. and San Bernardino
Co. all showed gains by whites in numbers if not in percentages. California mirrors the rest of the United States
where significant changes in the population mix are rapidly occurring. These can be graphically presented through the types of maps these two presenters have developed.

Greg McIntosh, our next speaker, isbest known for his book, The Piri Reis Map of 1513. In this presentation he turned his attention to the Portuguese pilot Moreira, marooned by Francis Drake in 1579, who claimed to have walked to Mexico from the Bay Area. The intriguing theory is that San Francisco Bay may have been confusedwith Laguna Salada in Baja California through repeated telling of this amazing trek. If Moreira’s tale was known by Antonio de la Ascension, whose map showing California as an island had fallen into Dutch hands, this plausible explanation for a sea continuing north from the Gulf of California might be explained. Laguna Salada certainly exists today as a dry plain below the US-Mexican border, flooded in earlier times. Onate in 1604 reported a gulf as continuing north to the west of the mouth of the Colorado River. Moreira’s tale is reported by secondary sources only, leaving us with the intriguing question: was Moreira the first European to actually see and report on San Francisco Bay, fully 200 years before the recognized overland discovery? Stay tuned for further discussion ofthis controversial idea.

Our final speaker of the day was Keith Clarke, professor at UC Santa Barbara. He gave us a whirlwind tour of the wonderful world of GIS/GPS from its December 1969 inception to its current state, enabling us to locate ourselves within 11 cm of any point on our globe. Google Earth is a quickly expanding tool with extensive coverage of street level views and millions of attached photos of all points of the earth. Geocaching is an exploding addiction for many (see Ken Jenning’s Maphead for an explanation of this phenomenon). OpenStreetMap.org is an editable map of the world constantly being updated by users. Zillow.com is a real estate dream with more information than anyone about your home and neighborhood. More similar sites are in the near future, prompting concerns about personal privacy. The upshot is that privacy no longer exists as can easily be gauged by the number of unsolicited phone calls we all receive. Instant updating of traffic maps now available on cell phones give us a hint of the possibilities for expanding both what we want to know and others want to discover about us. Wonderful and scary at the same time. Remember, like it or not, Big Brother is watching…

A general discussion period followed and then an open Board meeting for comments and suggestions. The meeting adjourned shortly after the library officially closed at 5:00 PM