Chicago Map Society Past Meeting Dates

21 September 2006, 5:30 PM
Imagining Destiny, Painting Buffalo: The Cartographic Eye in Nineteenth Century American Art
Speaker: Mary Peterson Zundo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Location: The Newberry Library

A survey of frontier buffalo images by nineteenth-century American artists reveals a privileging of right to left movement, a peculiarly American tendency that runs counter to the preference for left to right visual scanning in European art. Mary Peterson Zundo will explore how these painters, who struggled to adapt aesthetic and intellectual modes of vision to their artistic constructions of an uncharted territory, were also largely informed by the ideologies of Manifest Destiny, the “divinely ordained” Euroamerican conquest of the North American continent, and a “golden age” of American cartography that effloresced in response to the most rapid westward expansion in U.S. history.

19 October 2006, 6:00 PM
Mapping the New World for the Spanish Kings
Speaker: Barbara Mundy (Fordham University)
Location: Alliance Française (54 West Chicago Ave.)

On either side of the Atlantic, both Spaniards and Aztecs used maps for practical and symbolic purposes. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, the Spanish crown attempted to make its new global empire visible through maps. Barbara Mundy will explore how, in response to these imperial ambitions, maps made in sixteenth century Mexico show the transformation of indigenous mapping traditions, as new maps and new understandings of space were forged in the New World.

This event is co-sponsered by the Newberry Library’s Center for Public Programs. The Library's exhibit, Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico, runs from 28 September 2006 to 13 January 2007. Please visit the exhibit website for details.

The only requirement for membership in the Chicago Map Society is an interest in maps. For many of our members this interest is expressed through collections of rare items or of commonplace maps that have become embedded in American popular culture; cartographically-themed attire or collectibles; or through travel to places that were once easily accessible only through the maps, illustrations and descriptions in now-historic atlases. So bring your map and your story to share to our members show and tell.

The United States is often called a nation on the move, and the country has been a prolific producer of railroad and automobile road maps. But what kinds of maps were produced for travelers before the age of the train and the automobile. Join us as Smith Center Director Jim Akerman attempts to answer this question. His richly illustrated survey of maps made for explorers, emigrants, pioneers, tourists, and other travelers is based on the Newberry’s extensive collection of nineteenth century travel guides and maps.

In the first half of the 18th century, French royal cartographers maintained that a large inland sea, the Mer de l’Ouest, connected North America to the Pacific, and would facilitate the development of trade with Asia. So long as France controlled the Mississippi Valley, it would control this trade route. Explorers did not dispel this notion until 1753, when French explorers published a story from a Yazoo Indian who had travelled to the Pacific Ocean without finding any Western Sea. Professor Sayre presents this case study of the dialectic between cartographers and explorers—the geographic desires and myths that shaped the image of western North America.

The Oxford Companion to World Exploration
Speaker: David Buisseret (formerly of the Newberry Library & the University of Texas–Arlington)
Location: Ruggles Hall, The Newberry Library

David Buisseret, speaking on the occasion of the publication of the new Oxford Companion to World Exploration, will present to members of the Chicago Map Society a glittering variety of images from these volumes. Most of these images are from the collections of the Newberry Library.

15 March 2007, 5:30 PM

“The Most Successful Map of All Time”
Speaker: John Long (The Newberry Library)
Location: Towner Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

John Long will show slides and talk briefly about the origin, evolution, and impact of what may be the most influential map of modern times—the London Underground Map—from its creation in 1931 to the present. The presentation will cover an analysis of the map and how it works, the fate of Harry Beck, its creator, and its standing in the world today.

19 April 2007, 5:30 PM

“Prairie du Chien’s ‘Frenchtown’ and Albert Coryer’s Map”
Speaker: Lucy Murphy (Ohio State University–Newark)
Location: Ruggles Hall, The Newberry Library

During the middle of the nineteenth century, the fur trade faded in the Midwest as Yankee and Western European farmers and entrepreneurs overwhelmed the old French, Canadian, and Creole Metis fur trade families. By the end of the century, many of these old families had moved away or assimilated into the new society, while others lived together in neighborhoods that were often called “Frenchtowns.” Albert Coryer, born in 1877, was 73 years old when he passed along his memories of the Frenchtown neighborhood in the important old fur trade town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Fortunately for us, Coryer illustrated his stories with a delightful map of the old neighborhood. Professor Murphy will give an overview of the community’s history and share Coryer’s map and some of his stories.

17 May 2007, 5:30 PM

“Map Thieves I Have Known: E. Forbes Smiley and Others of His Ilk”
Speaker: George Ritzlin (George Ritzlin Maps & Prints)
Location: Towner Fellows’ Lounge, The Newberry Library

While the trade in antique maps is remarkably honest overall, inevitably there will be a few bad guys. George Ritzlin tells of his experience coping with the guys in black hats, with emphasis on E. Forbes Smiley III, who is now in prison for stealing maps from libraries.

September 2005, 5:30 PM
Marquette Myths
Speaker: Carl J. Weber (DeVry University)
Location: The Newberry Library

The 1673 Marquette–Jolliet Mississippi expedition of discovery endures as documented truth. In the 1920s and in 1960, although falling on deaf ears, formidable challenges to the Marquette–Jolliet story arose. They were based on allegations of fabricated documents said to have been concocted in the 1670s and 1850s. Today, scholars of the highest repute do indeed admit that the legitimacy of certain documents can no longer be sustained. However, as a historical “smoking gun,” the Marquette Autograph map, “drawn in his own hand,” is preserved by scholars as adequate to confirm the historicity of the expedition. Professor Weber, through comparative historical cartographic analysis, claims his evidence, prima facie, shows that Marquette’s Autograph map could not have been drawn before 1813. If true, the motives and implications of these findings are sure to stir up a historical hornet’s nest.

20 October 2005, 5:30 PM
Across the Wide Missouri: Maps of the Indian Country Before Lewis and Clark
Speaker: W. Raymond Wood (University of Missouri)
Location: The Newberry Library - Ruggles Hall (1st fl)

Mapping the Missouri began, not with Lewis and Clark in 1803, but in 1714 with the expedition of Etienne Vèniard de Bourgmont. In fact, the river remained poorly known by Europans and Americans until 1797, when the Spanish expedition led by James Mackay and John Thomas Evans returned to St. Louis. Seven years later, their charts provided detailed maps for the first full year of the Corps of Discovery's journey. The extent of these early maps' dependence on Indian informants is not known, but Native American charts, though created with different frames of reference, showed vast areas of the Louisiana Purchase with great accuracy.

10 November 2005, 5:30 PM
Mapping the West with Lewis and Clark
Speaker: Ralph Ehrenberg
Location: The Newberry Library

One of Thomas Jefferson's major objectives in sending the Corps of Discovery on this epic adventure was to map the vast region acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. Ralph Ehrenberg, an internationally recognized authority on the history of cartography, has directed two of the most important map collections in the world at the Library of Congress and the National Archives. In an illustrated talk, he will describe Lewis and Clark's preparation and training, their knowledge of the Trans-Mississippi West on the eve of the expedition, their surveying and mapping techniques, and the role of maps prepared by Indians and fur traders. Finally, Ehrenberg will discuss the preparation and printing of the published maps associated with the expedition, focusing on a number of historical maps on display in the exhibit, including a manuscript map prepared shortly after the return of the expedition.

8 December 2005, 5:30 PM
Maps in Chicago: 1612-2002
Speaker: Bob Holland
Location: The Newberry Library

Author Robert Holland will speak about his forthcoming book titled “Maps in Chicago: 1612-2002.” Holland, a former Professor of Philosophy at Hofstra University, is a long-time Chicago resident and avid and well-known map collector. A question and answer session and book signing will follow the talk.

19 January 2006, 5:30 PM
The Louisiana Maps of Dumont de Montigny
Speaker: Carla Zecher (Director, The Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies)
Location: The Newberry Library

Jean François Benjamin Dumont de Montigny was a French soldier who spent nearly two decades in Louisiana during the 1720s and 30s. After his return to France, he wrote a memoir in which he recounted his travels. Included in the memoir are Dumont’s own hand-drawn, colored maps of various sites in the Caribbean, along the Gulf Coast, and in the Mississippi valley. In an illustrated talk, Zecher will describe Dumont’s memoir, which has survived in a manuscript in the Newberry collections, and she will trace the evolution of the Louisiana colony and of Dumont’s mapmaking by comparing the maps in the Newberry manuscript with other maps known to have been drawn by Dumont, and which are preserved in collections in the U.S. and France.

16 February 2006, 5:30 PM
30th Anniversary Celebration and Members’ Night
Location: The Newberry Library

Please join us for an evening thirty years in the making! To commemorate the first meeting of the Chicago Map Society in February 1976 we invite members to share pieces from their own collections and tales of adventures in collecting at the Society’s annual Members’ Night. Other commemorative activities planned include recognition of the Society’s charter members.

To help us prepare for this evening, we ask that members (or non-members) who plan to bring an item to share let us know their intentions by Thursday morning (312-255-3659 or smithctr@newberry.org). We will try our best to accommodate requests for table space, easels, etc.

16 March 2006, 5:30 PM
Mapping the Cause of the Chicago Fire
Speaker: Richard F. Bales (Chicago Title Insurance Company)
Location: The Newberry Library

Chicago caught fire on the evening of 8 October 1871. Even while the city was still burning, Mrs. O’Leary and her cow were being blamed for starting the fire that ravaged more than two thousand acres in the city. But a few things that did not burn were the plats and other land records of the various abstract companies that eventually became Chicago Title Insurance Company. More than one hundred years later, Dick Bales, Assistant Regional Counsel of Chicago Title, used these records to reconstruct on paper the 1871 neighborhood of Mrs. O’Leary. In his analysis of the neighborhood and the transcript of an 1871 investigation into the cause of the fire, Bales uncovered discrepancies in the sworn testimony set forth in the transcript. He also identified the person who he feels did cause the fire.

30 March 2006, 5:30 PM
L. A. Zagoskin's Expedition to the Interior of Alaska, 1842-1844
Speaker: Dr. Alexei V. Postnikov (Institute of the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)
Location: The Newberry Library

The coast of Alaska was first sighted by Alexei Chirikof, with Vitus Bering’s expedition, in 1741. By the end of the century, the Russian America Company had been formed to encourage trade and colonization. Lavrenty Zagoskin, a naval officer, was given a two year assignment to conduct a reconnaissance of the region to help determine the most profitable and convenient sites for forts and trading posts. In 1842 and 1843, he traveled extensively on the Yukon, Kuskokwim, Innoko and Koyukuk Rivers, traveling over 3300 miles. Zagoskin made a series of remarkable maps, and also kept complete and accurate journals with details about the native people, their customs, language, and environment. Dr. Postnikov, the foremost expert on the Russian mapping of Alaska, will introduce us to this important explorer.

Tuesday, 23 May 2006 at 6:00 PM
Mapping Initiatives at the EVL
Speaker: Andy Johnson (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Location: Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary graduate research laboratory that combines art and computer science, specializing in advanced visualization and networking technologies. The laboratory is a joint effort of UIC’s College of Engineering and The School of Art & Design representing the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the country, offering graduate degrees in electronic visualization (MFA, MS, PhD). Professor Johnson will introduce us to the exciting cartographic possibilities of EVL, including LambdaVision, which serves up to 60 trillion bytes of U.S. urban city map data to distributed 100-megapixel displays; Walkabout, which allows you to load in geo-referenced terrains to walk on, and then drape various textures over those landscapes; and the Geowall, which makes use of projection systems to visualize structure and dynamics of the Earth in stereo. Join us for this exclusive introduction to cutting-edge cartography. Following the meeting, you may wish to enjoy dinner or drinks (on your own) in nearby Greektown.

15 June 2006, 5:30 PM
The Interior and the Insular: The National Map, 1898, and the Cartographic Imagination
Speaker: Scott Kirsch (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Location: The Newberry Library

Dr. Kirsch’s research examines the intersection of science, cartography and government in the US and colonial Philippines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His talk will explore the territoriality of government science and mapping projects, as well as public debates over the need for a “national map” in the US during the 1880s, all in an attempt to raise questions about the meaning of national territory in what came to be seen, after 1898, as a new, planetary world.

Wednesday, 22 September 2004
Empire for the Masses: Postcard Maps and the Colonization of West Africa, 1900-1960
Speaker: Tom Bassett (Prof. of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Location: The Newberry Library

Thomas Bassett, Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s Center for African Studies, will present an unusual tour through French West Africa as it existed from 1900-1960. Using postcard-sized maps, Bassett will address how this innovative format and circulation lent itself to advertising, forms of correspondence, and primary-school education, making France’s overseas empire more legible and accessible to the general public.

28 October 2004
Mapping the Silk Road and Beyond: 2000 Years of Exploring the East
Speaker: Ken Nebenzahl
Location: The Newberry Library

Since Classical times Europeans were aware that unknown lands far to the east were the sources of exquisite fabrics and spices. Ken Nebenzahl’s new book describes European efforts spanning two millennia to develop trade routes to Asia by land and sea. Mr. Nebenzahl’s lecture, illustrated by original manuscript and early printed maps, reviews this complicated and fascinating story. A book signing will follow the talk.

18 November 2004, 6:00 PM
Tour of the University of Chicago's Map Collections
Location: The University of Chicago, Regenstein Library

Chris Winters, Map Librarian of The University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, will give a tour of the University’s map collections

16 December 2004
Holiday Party and Members Show and Tell
Location: The Newberry Library

The only requirement for membership in the Chicago Map Society is an interest in maps. For many of our members this interest is expressed through collections of rare items or of commonplace maps that have become embedded in American popular culture; cartographically-themed attire or collectibles; or through travel to places that were once easily accesible only through the maps, illustrations and descripions in now-historic atlases. So bring your map and your story to share to our holiday party show and tell.

20 January 2005, 5:30 PM
Training historians to use their eyes: Charts, graphs, and thematic maps
Speaker: Bruce Fetter (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee)
Location: The Newberry Library

In order to train new generations of cartographically informed scholars, it is necessary to introduce students to the semiotics of maps. This talk will proceed from charts, which share some of the sign systems of maps, to graphs, to thematic maps.

17 February 2005, 5:30 PM
Chicago's Public Transit Maps
Speaker: Dennis McClendon (Chicago CartoGraphics)
Location: The Newberry Library

Like the city's transit system itself, the maps Chicagoans use to navigate public transit have changed through the decades. Dennis McClendon, the mapmaker who currently does the CTA map, will show the various maps produced by Chicago's streetcar, bus, and elevated companies, and the evolution of today's CTA and RTA maps.

17 March 2005, 5:30 PM
Maps and the Sense of Place in Early Modern Paris
Speaker: Elisabeth Hodges (Miami University)
Location: The Newberry Library

In general, we associate maps with the representation of concrete spaces such as a city, or a country. Yet maps also represent in a symbolic fashion the spatial relations between places and individuals. Well before modern notions of nationhood were defined as such, city views and guide book descriptions of Paris and Parisians offered a way for the public to think about citizenship and selfhood in spatial and narrative forms.

28 April 2005, 5:30 PM
The Civil War and Military Mapping
Speaker: Earl B. McElfresh (McElfresh Map Company)
Location: The Newberry Library

As important as maps can be in everyday life, in their military application maps can be the difference between life and death, victory and defeat. From ancient times to Iraq today, military topographical engineers have faced some common difficulties. Focusing on Civil War generals and their mapmakers, McElfresh will describe specific instances in which map successes or failures directly affected the outcome of campaigns and battles.

Saturday, 21 May 2005, 11:00 AM
Cyprus Engraved: Maps from The Cyprus Museum Collection.
A Field Trip to the Hellenic Museum for a tour of the Exhibit
Location: Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center
*There will not be a reception before or after this meeting, but you may want to sample some of the culinary delights of Greektown on your own after the meeting.

Join us for a guided tour of the new map exhibit at the Hellenic Museum. Due to its strategic position in the Mediterrian Basin, Cyprus became a magnet for geographers and cartographers. Maps depicting the island became a necessity not only for mariners and traders, but also for those who fought for possession of the island.

16 June 2005, 5:30 PM
‘The places of the seuerall Mappes’ in John Smith’s Generall Historie (1624)
Speaker: Mary Fuller (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Location: The Newberry Library

For a contemporary American readership, John Smith’s rescue by Pocahontas may be the most compelling moment in his corpus of works– but what did Smith’s English contemporaries think about when they read his work? Sometime in the second half of the seventeenth century, an early reader covered a copy of Smith’s text (Huntington 3346), with dense annotations. This reader’s annotations to the maps in the text begin to give an intriguingly different sense of Smith's biography, and how it was read in his own time.

19 September 2002
The A. H. Andrews & Co.: An Early Chicago Globe Maker
Speaker: Scott R. McEathron (University of Illinois)
Location: The Newberry Library

Join us as Scott McEathron, Assistant Map and Geography Librarian and Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shares a brief history of Alfred H. Andrews and his Chicago-based globe company. This lecture will explore Andrews’ connection with the Holbrook family of globe makers, review the types and characteristics of globes Andrews’ made, and present the results of a survey to locate existing globes.

17 October 2002
Reading the Chicago River
Speaker: Paul Heltne
Location: The Newberry Library
The Chicago River has been fundamental to the development of the Chicago region. In an illustrated lecture, the president emeritus of the Chicago Academy of Sciences explores the cultural and historical landscape of our region by focusing on the River. He draws upon paleontology, geology, and the glacial and postglacial history of the Chicago region to demonstrate how our human history has been shaped by larger natural forces.

12 November 2002
Surveying and Mapping in the Prehistoric New World
Speaker: Jim Marshall
Location: The Newberry Library

The invention of writing was a crucial step in the development of civilizations at various centers around the world. Writing was not a sudden or spontaneous invention but instead was an outgrowth of thousands of years of experience at manipulating symbols such as those used for counting and weighing trade goods and for measuring land. Written communication in the pre-Columbian New World north of the Rio Grande seems to have stabilized at understanding these geometrical concepts, producing plan drawings based onthem, and then laying out and building earthworks. Civil engineer Jim Marshall will share his findings on the pre-historic geometric earthworks he has surveyed and mapped in Ohio.

12 December 2002
Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms: An On-line Education Initiative
Jim Akerman (The Newberry Library)
Location: The Newberry Library

Many research libraries restrict use of their collections in the name of conservation and security. These policies prevent elementary and secondary school students from engaging with primary documents that greatly enhance student comprehension of the humanities. Likewise, many teachers want to incorporate historic maps into the classroom but lack the resources and/or the training to do so. In an effort to make its Map Collections more widely accessible, the Newberry is developing an on-line resource for teaching the geographical aspects of United States History. James Akerman, Director of the Smith Center, will provide background on the project, explain the project goals, describe the process of preparing lessons to accompany the on-line maps, and demonstrate a test version of the website.

16 January 2003
New Maps for Old History: Thematic Cartography for the New Encyclopedia of Chicago History
Speakers: Doug Knox, Michael Conzen, Dennis McClendon, and Anne Keating
Location: The Newberry Library

Four key contributors to the new history maps in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Chicago History will outline the project to embellish the encyclopedia with almost 50 maps of historical subjects based on careful historical research, artful design, and rigorous editing. The Encyclopedia comprises two products: a 1,300-page book and a hypermedia electronic encyclopedia to be published on-line. Each will provide comprehensive reference for scholars, teachers, students, and the general public. The Encyclopedia encompasses all aspects of Chicago's past, from geological prehistory to the present. No comparable reference work exists.

20 February 2003
The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World
Speaker: Ken Alder
Location: The Newberry Library - Ruggles Hall

During a time of great unrest, empirical evidence and tangible fact provide a comforting standard to cling to. Perhaps that explains why, during the tumult of the French Revolution, Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain and Jean-Baptist-Joseph Delambre, two intrepid astronomer-geographers in their mid-40s, did the calculations that would give birth to what we now call the metric system. Their success was a scientific triumph, but there was a problem. Mechain had made a significant error in the measurements. In addition to his extensive archival research, Alder—on his own private Tour de France—biked the route that Mechain and Delambre measured in 1792 between Barcelona and Dunkirk in order to project the circumference of the earth.

20 March 2003
Making Maps and Perspective Views for Fun and Profit in the Age of the PC
Speaker: Tom Willcockson
Location: The Newberry Library

Historical illustrator and cartographer Tom Willcockson of Mapcraft Cartography will discuss his life as a freelance mapmaker and his use of the desktop computer to design maps and perspective views. His projects to be highlighted include historic town perspective views, maps of the Lincoln Park Zoo and Chicago Botanic Gardens along with maps and perspective views produced for the Art Institute's Van Gogh/Gauguin exhibit.

22 April 2003
Mapping Time in Early Colonial Mexico
Speaker: Eduardo de Jesús Douglas
Location: The Newberry Library

15 May 2003
The Baroness’ Bankbook: The Influence of Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts on Victorian Cartography
Speaker: Mary Ritzlin
Location: The Newberry Library

Join us as Mary Ritzlin shares the ways in which Lady Burdett-Coutts (1814 – 1906) influenced the content of maps during the Victorian era. From her funding of the 1864 Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, to her support of expeditions by Livingstone and Stanley, and in her efforts to reform public housing in London, Burdett-Coutts stands as a patron of cartography. Her actions affected how cartographers, and in turn, map consumers viewed the world.

26 June 2003
Where the Mediterranean Meets the Alps: The Mapping of Slovenia from Antiquity to Modern Times
Speaker: Veslin Miscovic (National and University Library, Ljubjana, Slovenia)
Location: The Newberry Library

On the frontiers of Central Europe, Germanic and Latin influences created a distinct blend of language and culture in Slovenia. The National and University Library's curator of maps will guide us on an illustrated tour through 2000 years of the mapping of Slovenia, from a Roman road map and the great Renaissance atlases to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century mapping of emerging Slovenian nationalism. Join us for a cartographic exploration of an ancient, yet new European land.

Thursday-Saturday, October 11-13
“A Taste for Maps,” The Fourteenth Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography.

This year's lectures concern the history of the map trade, and in particular the effort of early modern European map publishers to finance and market their maps. The featured speaker will be Dr. Mary Pedley, of the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan. She will deliver three lectures on the French and British map trade. A roundtable of shorter papers on the Italian, Dutch, and German trades will be presented on Saturday morning by Drs. David Woodward, Peter van der Krogt, and Markus Heinz.

Saturday-Tuesday, October 13-16
International Map Collectors' Society Annual Symposium,
The Newberry Library, Adler Planetarium, and AGS Collection (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). Co-sponsored by the Chicago Map Society and the Map Society of Wisconsin.

Participation in this event, commencing at 1:00 Saturday afternoon in the Newberry's Ruggles Hall, requires that you pay a registration fee.

Tuesday, 13 November 2001
“Automation and Cartography at the USGS: 1950-1970”
Program: Patrick H. McHaffie
Location: The Newberry Library.

The USGS was of central importance to the mapping community at large during this period, serving as a major employer, place of technological innovation, and a source for public domain map series and data. The agency also had important and documented ties to other federal and state agencies and private sector firms, serving as a catalyst and model for scientific standardization, technological progress, and professionalization of the mapping community. In nearly all instances, the researcher places his trust in primary sources with a heavy reliance on the oral narrations of individuals who were intimately involved with the USGS between 1950 and 1970. These oral histories in themselves serve as overwhelming testimony to the scope and scale of change (technological, organizational, scientific) that took place at the U.S. principal mapping agency in the last half of the 20th century.

13 December 2001
Exhibit Lecture and Tour
Speakers: Robert Karrow (The Newberry Library) and James Akerman (The Newberry Library)
Location: The Newberry Library

Join Bob Karrow and Jim Akerman for their reflections on the process of selecting the maps included in "Cartographic Treasures of the Newberry Library," a major exhibit that will be on display at the Newberry in October 2001-January 2002. Their remarks will be followed by a guided tour of the exhibit.

17 January 2002
The Language of Maps
Speaker: Robert Karrow
Location: The Newberry Library

We talk about the language of flowers and the languages of music and art. Is there a language of maps? If there is, how does it work and what kinds of ideas can it communicate? Is it a universal language, understandable by members of many different cultures? How is it related to the bits of nature language usually inscribed on maps? Join The Newberry Library Curator of Maps Robert Karrow for an illustrated slide talk that explores these philosophical questions.

21 February 2002
Field Checking Maps: A Veteran's Tale
Speaker: Dennis McClendon (Design Director, Chicago Cartographics)
Location: The Newberry Library

Field checking is something that's not really covered in the cartography textbooks, but it's invaluable for serious large-scale mapping. The dilemmas faced by a conscientious and thoughtful field checker illuminate many issues: what qualifies as a street? What's the proper name for a particular landmark? What's the point of numbering an unmarked highway? Join veteran Chicago cartographer (and field checker) Dennis McClendon as he discusses how he has grappled with these and other issues in a variety of contexts.

21 March 2002
Terra Incognita: Mapping the Calumet
Speaker: Paul Petraitis (Ridge Historical Society)
Location: The Newberry Library

Paul Petraitis, curator at the Ridge Historical Society, and frequent lecturer on range of local historical topics will present "Terra Incognita: Mapping the Calumet." Join us for an entertaining exploration of the history of the Calumet region seen through printed and manuscript maps from the 1670s through the present day.