Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library

06/16/2021

What questions do you ask as you look at a map? Helping students to ask breaks down ideas about maps as absolute reality and opens up bigger conversations about whose perspective is represented and who is NOT represented.

In our summer NEH workshop, teachers will look at this 1565 map of New France and consider the question: "what does the idea of a 'new world' have to do with this map?" What do you think?

#TeachingWithMaps

[Image Description: Detail from a 1565 map of "New France" and "Nurembega" shows Native people, European fishing vessels and animals intermingling on land and in the water.]

Giovanni Battista Ramusio. "La Nuoua Francia." 1565. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3f462s345

What questions do you ask as you look at a map? Helping students to ask breaks down ideas about maps as absolute reality and opens up bigger conversations about whose perspective is represented and who is NOT represented.

In our summer NEH workshop, teachers will look at this 1565 map of New France and consider the question: "what does the idea of a 'new world' have to do with this map?" What do you think?

#TeachingWithMaps

[Image Description: Detail from a 1565 map of "New France" and "Nurembega" shows Native people, European fishing vessels and animals intermingling on land and in the water.]

Giovanni Battista Ramusio. "La Nuoua Francia." 1565. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3f462s345

06/14/2021

Brookline By Map

Join the LMEC and the Public Library of Brookline for a dive into the historical geography of Brookline, and using maps for research!

06/14/2021

Tonight at 7! Don't miss Brookline By Map, the latest in our Neighborhood By Map series. We'll be discussing local historical geography with the Public Library of Brookline and the Brookline Historical Society. Hit the link below to register and get the streaming links emailed to you! Otherwise, just head to our YouTube or pages at 7 and enjoy the show. 🤓

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brookline-by-map-tickets-148784050099

Tonight at 7! Don't miss Brookline By Map, the latest in our Neighborhood By Map series. We'll be discussing local historical geography with the Public Library of Brookline and the Brookline Historical Society. Hit the link below to register and get the streaming links emailed to you! Otherwise, just head to our YouTube or pages at 7 and enjoy the show. 🤓

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brookline-by-map-tickets-148784050099

06/11/2021

Summer is just about here! For some nature-minded New Englanders, this means weekends are spent in New Hampshire, hiking in the White Mountains or swimming in the Lakes Region. We have plenty of different White Mountain maps in our collections, including this 1890 bird’s eye view. Bird’s eye view maps, which were popular during the last half of the 19th century, were often used to advertise popular tourist destinations.

This map looks north, and emphasizes the most important peaks in the region, intentionally exaggerating their elevations, as well as showing towns and hotels to stay in. In this excerpt, you can see the tallest peak, Mt. Washington, looming on the right amidst the Presidential range.

[Image description: A sepia-toned map shows a bird’s eye view of textured and elevated mountain peaks of varying sizes. The bottom of the map shows some small lakes, and roads and buildings are scattered throughout the landscape. Small numbers on each peak indicate the name of the mountain; names are listed in a key along the bottom of the image.]

Excerpt from: G.W. Morris, “Birds eye view of the White Mountains” (Portland, [1890]). https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:wd376322p

Summer is just about here! For some nature-minded New Englanders, this means weekends are spent in New Hampshire, hiking in the White Mountains or swimming in the Lakes Region. We have plenty of different White Mountain maps in our collections, including this 1890 bird’s eye view. Bird’s eye view maps, which were popular during the last half of the 19th century, were often used to advertise popular tourist destinations.

This map looks north, and emphasizes the most important peaks in the region, intentionally exaggerating their elevations, as well as showing towns and hotels to stay in. In this excerpt, you can see the tallest peak, Mt. Washington, looming on the right amidst the Presidential range.

[Image description: A sepia-toned map shows a bird’s eye view of textured and elevated mountain peaks of varying sizes. The bottom of the map shows some small lakes, and roads and buildings are scattered throughout the landscape. Small numbers on each peak indicate the name of the mountain; names are listed in a key along the bottom of the image.]

Excerpt from: G.W. Morris, “Birds eye view of the White Mountains” (Portland, [1890]). https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:wd376322p

06/09/2021

Angles on Bending Lines: Brian Jefferson on geographic information systems and the war on crime and drugs

In this conversation series, we talk with experts about why we should be careful about geographic information in modern data. How is data collected, and how does it get fixed into categories and numbers? Who gets to own data sets, and who gets to make decisions using them? What sorts of public responsibilities should shape the social lives of data?

Brian Jefferson is an associate professor of geography at the University of Illinois whose work explores capitalism, digital technology, and the state in urban contexts.

06/08/2021

Tomorrow, 6/9 at noon: Brian Jefferson in conversation with the Map Center on GIS & the War on Crime and Drugs. This is the last event in our current Angles on Bending Lines series, and we'd love for you to come learn with us!

Visit this link for more info and to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brian-jefferson-on-gis-and-the-war-on-crime-and-drugs-tickets-149749784637

[Image description: A dark gray background with a black tower emitting signals. In the foreground are vertical neon yellow stripes mimicking prison bars, and the title and author of the book: Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age, by Brian Jefferson."]

Tomorrow, 6/9 at noon: Brian Jefferson in conversation with the Map Center on GIS & the War on Crime and Drugs. This is the last event in our current Angles on Bending Lines series, and we'd love for you to come learn with us!

Visit this link for more info and to register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brian-jefferson-on-gis-and-the-war-on-crime-and-drugs-tickets-149749784637

[Image description: A dark gray background with a black tower emitting signals. In the foreground are vertical neon yellow stripes mimicking prison bars, and the title and author of the book: Digitize and Punish: Racial Criminalization in the Digital Age, by Brian Jefferson."]

06/07/2021

On this day in 1958 Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, record producer: Prince released 39 albums in his career and wrote hundreds of songs under his own name and pseudonyms. Today we celebrate Prince, who would have been 63, with his entreaty to Apollonia in the 1984 film Purple Rain. If you're in the Twin Cities area, maybe today is a good day for a purifying swim in Lake Minnetonka.

Map: ESRI. "USGS National Map". "Lake Minnetonka". June 4, 2021. https://arcg.is/1Lfvuj

Image Description: A map of the Twin Cities area of Minnesota is overlaid with the quote "Purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" in purple.

On this day in 1958 Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, record producer: Prince released 39 albums in his career and wrote hundreds of songs under his own name and pseudonyms. Today we celebrate Prince, who would have been 63, with his entreaty to Apollonia in the 1984 film Purple Rain. If you're in the Twin Cities area, maybe today is a good day for a purifying swim in Lake Minnetonka.

Map: ESRI. "USGS National Map". "Lake Minnetonka". June 4, 2021. https://arcg.is/1Lfvuj

Image Description: A map of the Twin Cities area of Minnesota is overlaid with the quote "Purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka" in purple.

06/04/2021

This week in #TeachingWithMaps we feature Maps for Artist-Teachers, a series of art-based exercises. Art teachers will find activities based around color theory, contour line and perspective drawing. English, humanities and social studies teachers can use maps from this set as a point of departure and introduce conversations around utopia/dystopia and global politics. Science and math teachers may use these maps as visual data and challenge students to translate their own data into artwork.

Link: https://collections.leventhalmap.org/map-sets/269

Map: Boston and Maine Railroad, and Geo. H. Walker & Co. "Birds-eye view from summit of Mt. Washington; White Mountains, New Hampshire." 1902. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:wd3763140

[Image Description: A circular, birds-eye view map of the summit of Mt. Washington shows the mountain in the center surrounded by a dreamy, watercolor landscape of the surrounding white mountains.]

This week in #TeachingWithMaps we feature Maps for Artist-Teachers, a series of art-based exercises. Art teachers will find activities based around color theory, contour line and perspective drawing. English, humanities and social studies teachers can use maps from this set as a point of departure and introduce conversations around utopia/dystopia and global politics. Science and math teachers may use these maps as visual data and challenge students to translate their own data into artwork.

Link: https://collections.leventhalmap.org/map-sets/269

Map: Boston and Maine Railroad, and Geo. H. Walker & Co. "Birds-eye view from summit of Mt. Washington; White Mountains, New Hampshire." 1902. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:wd3763140

[Image Description: A circular, birds-eye view map of the summit of Mt. Washington shows the mountain in the center surrounded by a dreamy, watercolor landscape of the surrounding white mountains.]

06/01/2021

This Thursday, 6/3 at noon, join us on Zoom for a map monster show and tell! We'll be exploring some of the most monstrous creatures in our collections, as well as the maps they live on. Check it out at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/map-monster-show-and-tell-tickets-154756389527

[Image description: A green sea monster cheerfully rears its head off the coast of Italy on a colorful map.]

Robert T. Aitchison, Grolier Book Shop (Kansas City, Mo.), and McCormick-Armstrong Company. "A chart of the history of printing in Europe." 1931. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:0r96fn38c

This Thursday, 6/3 at noon, join us on Zoom for a map monster show and tell! We'll be exploring some of the most monstrous creatures in our collections, as well as the maps they live on. Check it out at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/map-monster-show-and-tell-tickets-154756389527

[Image description: A green sea monster cheerfully rears its head off the coast of Italy on a colorful map.]

Robert T. Aitchison, Grolier Book Shop (Kansas City, Mo.), and McCormick-Armstrong Company. "A chart of the history of printing in Europe." 1931. https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:0r96fn38c

05/28/2021

How much do you know about housing equity where you live? Have you ever wondered how, where and why affordable housing is built? How do factors like age, race, education, or transportation affect people's ability to find housing? How does your area compare up against other areas in terms of key indicators?

We were so lucky to get to speak with Tom Hopper, the Director of Research and Analysis at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP) this month. We are even more excited to bring this conversation to you today. In this interview, Tom from MHP and GIS Librarian Belle Lipton discuss MHP's incredibly valuable (and fun!) digital data tools for exploring where you live.

Read the interview, live on our site today at www.leventhalmap.org/articles/get-to-know-your-data-center-for-housing-data, where Tom and Belle nerd out about the nuts and bolts of how MHP created these data tools, as well as some of the reasons why GIS and geography are so important to understanding the housing crisis.

[Image description: Map of Ashmont T station area with housing colored in shades ranging from yellow to dark orange to show housing density.]

How much do you know about housing equity where you live? Have you ever wondered how, where and why affordable housing is built? How do factors like age, race, education, or transportation affect people's ability to find housing? How does your area compare up against other areas in terms of key indicators?

We were so lucky to get to speak with Tom Hopper, the Director of Research and Analysis at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP) this month. We are even more excited to bring this conversation to you today. In this interview, Tom from MHP and GIS Librarian Belle Lipton discuss MHP's incredibly valuable (and fun!) digital data tools for exploring where you live.

Read the interview, live on our site today at www.leventhalmap.org/articles/get-to-know-your-data-center-for-housing-data, where Tom and Belle nerd out about the nuts and bolts of how MHP created these data tools, as well as some of the reasons why GIS and geography are so important to understanding the housing crisis.

[Image description: Map of Ashmont T station area with housing colored in shades ranging from yellow to dark orange to show housing density.]

05/27/2021

This week is the Boston Teachers Union Ethnic Studies Week of Action. Ethnic studies as a discipline is about 50 years old and takes as its subject the experiences, historical and contemporary, of communities of color from a non-Eurocentric perspective. It is a way for students to study their histories and cultures in depth and through a social justice lens. Many ethnic studies courses address immigrant communities to the United States from all over the world.

Today’s map addresses the concept of borders. National borders are imaginary lines made conceptually and politically real that may or may not be related to geographic features on the land. They are often contested. They are often taken for granted. They are enforced and also metaphoric. The notion of who does and does not belong in the United States is often framed around the idea of borders, and which ones are crossed. These issues are important ones in ethnic studies as intersectional identities are often the subject of lessons of history and culture.

Our beautiful sinuous 1911 map of the course of the Rio Grande from 1852 to 1907 between El Paso in the United States and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico shows how unpredictable this one particular national border was, as the Rio Grande/Bravo changed its path. The river had been identified as part of the political line between these two nation-states, and, as it shifted back and forth, a small number of people became residents of one country or the other. Interviews of people living in this area show that they often felt themselves to be residents of the border region, instead of citizens of Mexico or the United States. In 1964, the U.S. tried to resolve the issue by putting the river into a concrete culvert and granting a small area of land to Mexico.
Borders between nations—those formed by natural land features, those created by artificial walls and riverbeds, those willed into being by people with specific agendas—have shaped the experiences of many students in the United States. Borders as a metaphorical concept also shape students’ experiences as domestic and international migration pattern shift, and as students navigate multiple identities and related social perceptions.

In this Ethnic Studies Week of Action, the Map Center recommends exploring maps to reflect on the multi-layered meanings of borders.

[Image description: Three square images that flow into one another as you swipe, so they form one wide rectangle with four colorful pastel lines wending their ways across all three images.]

W.W. Follett, Relative positions of Rio Grande near El Paso between 1852 and 1907 (International Boundary Commission, United States and Mexico, Government Printing Office, 1911) https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:fn107c44d

05/27/2021

Boston By Map 5/27

Join the Leventhal Map and Education Center for a virtual session on historical geography! Bring your lunch, map questions, and enthusiasm.