CSU Fullerton CMS Meeting January 31, 2009

Jump to Meeting Notes

SCHEDULE

MEETING NOTES

The meeting was called to order at 9:02AM by President Susan Caughey. Greg McIntosh introduced guests from Cal State Fullerton and noted that Al Vogeler was ill, and would not be able to be with us. Bill Warren had produced a short PowerPoint presentation covering the various exhibits of the Boswell map collection which had taken place between 1973 and 1988. Each exhibit was themed and much credit should go to the Friends of the Pollak Library on the CSUF campus for their continued support over the years of this important collection.

Farron Brougher of CSUF then introduced a video of Al Vogeler explaining some of the collection's contents and some of its highlights. The problem has always been rather short public hours of the Special Collections Department of the Library, limiting research through these 1500 maps. As we were to see, this has been remedied in rather spectacular fashion.

Our first scheduled speaker then was Terry Ahlberg of Irvine. Terry has been a Jo Mora collector for 15 years and certainly has the most extensive collection outside of the Mora family archives. He brought nearly 20 examples with him. Fortunately, Jo Mora made his maps in large format. Many were in plastic sleeves, others framed, and all were displayed around the front of the conference room for all to examine. Jo Mora lived from 1876 to 1949, and spoke nine languages including Hopi and Navajo. His father was a sculptor, his brother a portrait artist. His first map done in 1926 was of the Monterey peninsula and was for Samuel F.B. Morse, son of the telegraph inventor, and owner of the Del Monte Co., active in that area. His second map in 1927 was of the State of California with a wealth of wonderful figures and stories surrounding the map. This map was reproduced in many versions until 1946, the most common version. Terry brought first editions of both maps.

From there Mora went on to make illustrated maps of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite. All were black and white, later printed in colored versions. His 1933 Rodeo poster was adapted by Levi-Strauss Co. A map of the 17 mile drive followed. In all cases, Jo Mora did the map in black and white, using India ink for the often black backgrounds of the surround. In 1927 he was granted 13 acres along the 17 mile drive which became his Pebble Beach Studio. His Central America map was drawn for the Grace Line. Subsequently he traveled free on their ships. His last map was that of Los Angeles, done in 1942, and subsequently published by Thomas Bros. Jo Mora was a member of the Bohemian Club and knew many important people through that organization. Terry had acquired several pen and ink originals of Jo Mora's work from Mora's son. Jo Mora's style of figures in the surround goes back many centuries, but his playfulness in showing rum runners thumbing their noses at the Coast Guard beyond the twelve mile limit on the 1927 version of California and similar amusing vignettes place Jo Mora's among examples of maps to be studied in detail by historians as well as map people.

The next speaker was Juan Ceva of Pasadena speaking on "Cartography of the Balearic Islands - A Collector's Survey." Juan is a native of Mallorca who works for Raytheon and JPL on interplanetary navigation and GPS. The Balearic Islands were the home of the Medieval Catalan School of Cartography. Junipero Serra was also a native of these islands. Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks all raided these islands at various times. The Balearicans were renowned through the ancient world for their use of sling throwers against enemies and game. The earliest map Juan showed from his collection was a portolan map by Dalorto Dulcert in 1339 which appeared in the Catalan Atlas of 1375. He showed other very early maps by Cresques (1380), Viladestes (1413), Valseca (1439), Rosell(1462) and Bertran (1476). The Piri Ries map of 1521 showed the Balearics. Ortelius' map of 1590 was reversed, east to west, and this incorrect model was repeated many times by others. The British invaded the islands several times, and it was French for a while. (British Admiral Byng withdrew his fleet to Gibraltar in 1756  rather than attack the entrenched French and was killed by firing squad for his lack of bravery). The islands were finally seized from the British by Spain in 1782. Brits such as Tony Blair still enjoy vacationing on its sunny beaches. It is very similar to Southern California in climate. To illustrate the confusion of longitude on early maps, the Tofino map of 1786 exhibits four different longitudes based on different prime meridians. Juan's extensive collection was beautifully shown in PowerPoint in an excellent presentation on this often ignored corner of the world.

After a box lunch the meeting was reconvened for the Business Meeting by President Susan Caughey. She announced the next meeting would be held jointly with the California Historical Society at their headquarters in San Francisco on June 20th. She also noted our revised website should be up and running by June. Treasurer Bill Tefft assured us the Society is solvent. Several suggestions were made on how the Society might use its funds for scholarships or contests involving cartography or a survey of cartographic resources in the State. It was suggested that the Society place more emphasis on cultural mapping and GIS. Another suggestion was to examine the program currently underway at the Nixon Library on Geographic Concepts to see how we might help. Leonard Rothman noted the Bay Area Map Group has become active with three meetings a year in member's homes and highly suggested Southern California might follow that lead as an additional benefit for membership in CMS. A new membership directory is planned for this year following a new survey of the members to bring interests and addresses up to date. The new website will also contain such a directory open only to members and listing only information they wish to have included.

Our next speaker was Dr. Judy Tyner whose subject was "Two Wheel Maps: The Use of Maps in Bicycle Travel Narratives." These began to appear in bicycling magazines in the 1880's. Interestingly maps were common in fictionalized stories but not so in non-fiction narratives. Judy read through forty such bicycle trip narratives looking for patterns of map use. Many had no maps at all. Those that did had quality varying from crude hand drawn maps to the use of commercial maps with routes superimposed, usually by hand. Perhaps the cost of producing and printing maps was the problem. Also she pointed out that cartographers are seldom acknowledged in books. Often the riding public is a great deal more interested in mileage and slope between stopping points than in an exact representation. A map with a cross sectional view of the terrain is much more useful for riders. A map indicating the area within the country is less than useful, but some are printed that way. Dr Tyner has done an extensive amount of bicycle touring and is a recognized map expert and so deplored a book titled "Two Wheels and a Map" which contained not one map. She noted that of Bill Bryson's well known travel books only two contain even small scale maps of the areas covered. She suggested publishers of travel books should be referred to the NACIS website for a listing of available cartographers who might draw maps aimed at the book's audience.

Deborah Hann was next discussing "Maps in Children's Literature: Their Uses, Forms and Functions." We are all familiar with Robert Louis Stevenson having constructed a map as a guide for writing "Treasure Island." Deborah pointed out three reasons for maps in children's books. They show the child's place in the World, act as a plot point for the story, and help the child construct his own world in his mind. Children learn by exploring the world around them. Some books, such as the "Hobbit" series carefully illustrate plot points through the inclusion of maps. Winnie the Pooh's forest world is another clever pictorial map of an imaginary world. Interestingly, clever characters seem always to be able to read maps for clues in solving puzzles such as lost treasure or routes between specific points in the story.  Age appropriate maps are often pictorial in nature and may show the routes by dashed lines. We've all seen the meandering dashed line of the boy on an errand with multiple distractions along the way, a humorous rendition of point A to point B. Deborah spent considerable time looking through several libraries of children's books and wrote this for her thesis at Cal State Long Beach. Her work won the Best Thesis Award for the College of Liberal Arts. She was an animated and very interesting speaker on a subject we all could share.

Our next speaker was to have been Neal Malloch describing "The Big Map." Unfortunately he could not attend and so the fate of this enormous 75 year old map is still undetermined. Whether it can ever again be displayed is a mystery.

Farron Brougher of Cal State Fullerton moved in to fill the gap. He is an accomplished photographer and discussed photographing old maps. Often they are mostly white surface and so are underexposed, requiring shutter adjustment. For computer screen viewing JPEG images are generally adequate. Macro-lenses are not required; use a zoom lens with something like 28-150 zoom. Images can be made using handheld flash since the exposure time is short. Farron recommended a diffuser for the flash spreading the light more evenly over the surface of the map. Use as big a flash as possible and it will overpower any room light. Photo editing programs will allow sharpening of images along with cropping and rotating. The Cal State Fullerton website images were done by hanging the map vertically on a black background from a distance of 3 to 6 feet using a 10 megapixel camera. He suggested taking one overall picture and then multiple images of important parts of the map.

Next to speak was Annette Anderson-Ma who created the map descriptions of the Boswell collection using a FileMaker Pro database. She explained the process of cataloging each of 1500 maps and then incorporating Farron's images. The database is searchable by Title, Author, Primary Area, Areas Covered, Subject Headings, and Keyword. The database can now be accessed at http:/www.library.fullerton.edu/boswell. This is the culmination of four years of work, now available to anyone in the world with a computer. This work was underwritten by Friends of the Pollak Library of Cal State Fullerton.  It is an enormous accomplishment in opening this world class collection to anyone wishing to peruse the contents. Our hats are off to the staff and particularly to Dr. Albert Vogeler for shepherding this project along and overseeing the contents, and to the Friends for their monetary support through the years.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30 PM and the audience moved to the Special Collections area where a number of rare maps from the collection were displayed. Most of those displayed were uncolored, a personal favorite with Roy Boswell who put this collection together along with Ernest Toy, then Librarian for the Pollak Library. We were honored by the presence of Dr. Richard Pollard, current Library Director, during our meeting and especially appreciated his acting as a living easel for the Jo Mora maps.