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A. C. Metcalf, Who Cares Who Made the Map? La Carta del Cantino and its anonymous maker.
T. W. Shawa, Guidelines for Creating Historical Geospatial Boundary Data
A. Blackler, Conference Review – First International Workshop on the Origin and Evolution of Portolan Charts - Lisbon

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As witnessed by the recent exhibition of the world maps of Matteo Ricci and Ferdinand Verbiest at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Jesuit cartography still arouses public curiosity centuries after the maps were made. While Jesuit science and mathematics have been the subject of much study, especially in the context of East Asia, the broader and more diverse practices of Jesuit cartography around the world have proven more elusive. At the same time, significant scholarly and public interest remains about both the nature of Jesuit cartography and the longer-term influence it had on the process of imagining localities, nations, empires and cosmologies. Is there coherence to the category 'Jesuit cartography'? If so, what created this coherence aside from the Jesuit order itself? How did Jesuit cartography emerge in tandem with indigenous mapping traditions? And finally, why did Jesuit cartography have such important effects on both national and global scales?
The Journal of Jesuit Studies seeks to publish an issue devoted to Jesuit Cartography that will include an overview of the current state of the field of Jesuit cartography along with six topical articles in August 2018. Abstracts of proposed submissions should be 500 words or less, and are due by Friday 19 May 2017. Full articles should be approximately 7000 words, including footnotes, and will be due by 1 October 2017. A summary article and bibliography by the issue editor on the historiography of Jesuit cartography will be available to contributors.
Contributions might focus on particular maps, cosmological or geographical mapping, particular cartographers and groups of cartographers, mapping and printing techniques, indirect influences of Jesuit mapping in places like Korea, Russia or Japan or on cartographic techniques in places with Jesuit schools like France, transcultural cooperation in creating and disseminating maps, maps as establishing relations between fields of study (cartography and mathematics, linguistics, natural history, aesthetics, or religion), and institutional practices as observatories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries among other topics. Papers that combine novel archival work and a broader engagement with conceptual or theoretical approaches to Jesuit cartography are especially welcome. Geographic diversity and use of comparative approaches to different regions will factor into considerations of the issue as a whole. Potential contributors should consult the comparative, historical and critical approaches pioneered in J. B. Harley and David Woodward's The History of Cartography (1987+) as well as J. B. Harley's seminal article The Map as Mission (1991), more recent work on the sociology of knowledge and science, and/or data- and simulation-driven digital humanities and historical geography models as baselines for methodology. All papers will be published in English, although help with translation can be arranged.
Color and black and white images are possible and should be tentatively proposed with the abstract as a list (separate from the word count). Acquisition of publication-quality image files and rights to reproduce are the responsibility of the author. A permanent website resource separate from the journal will be available to contributors who wish to publish extra reference images.
The Journal of Jesuit Studies is published in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College. It has four issues per year, three of which are thematic and one of which is open JJS is published by Brill and is peer reviewed, fully open access and is part of Reuters Thomson Web of Science Indexing (see http://www.brill.com/products/journal/journal-jesuit-studies). Questions about the issue and abstract submissions should be addressed to Robert Batchelor, batchelo@georgiasouthern.edu.
Robert Batchelor, Professor of History and Director of Digital Humanities, Georgia Southern University
Forest Drive Building (Office 1211, 5539 Forest Drive)
PO 8054
Statesboro, GA 30460.

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Coinciding with the celebration of Canada's 150th anniversary and the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) 50th anniversary, Ontario's university libraries are releasing a collection of over 1000 historical topographic maps of Ontario. The project highlights Ontario's rich history and changing landscape over the past 100 years, and is evidence of how Ontario's academic libraries continue to play a key role in preserving our national and provincial heritage in the digital age.
The project is a province-wide collaboration, led by the OCUL Geo Community, an open forum for the exchange of information relating to maps and GIS, to digitize and geocode early topographic maps of Ontario at the 1:25000 and 1:63360 scales. The maps were originally produced by the Department of National Defence (until 1923: the Department of Militia and Defence) and show a variety of both natural and man-made features covering towns, cities and their surrounding areas in Ontario, over the period of 1906 to 1977. This project represents the single most comprehensive digitization project of the early-National Topographic Series map collection in Canada.
Early topographic maps are heavily used by historians and researchers interested in examining change over time. The project aims to improve access to the maps by making them available online and offering visual exploration through the project website and in the Scholars GeoPortal platform. There is benefit for Ontario’s students in having access to these resources. A project with the functionality of this one makes discovering the history of land use/development in Ontario far more accessible both for researchers and as a learning tool for students, says Ted Wilush, McMaster University Bachelor of Commerce graduate, and map enthusiast.
Researchers and students can explore the maps and compare changes over time using the GeoPortal's map viewer that contains current base map data and a transparency slider feature. The ability to use layers to compare the same (map) sheet from multiple eras against both each other and a modern map/satellite image is invaluable, Ted states.
Ontario's university libraries have been working together through OCUL on initiatives such as this since 1967. Preserving and expanding access to the broad research collections held by Ontario's university libraries is at the core of OCUL's collaboration, explains Vivian Lewis, OCUL Chair and University Librarian at McMaster University. It is exciting to have this collection digitized and openly available to the public. The OCUL Geo Community (previously named the OCUL Map Group) formed in 1973 to communicate and collaborate on map projects, including a union catalogue of topographic maps. Moving forward, the group plans to engage with the larger map community in Canada about the project, and identify opportunities to build on it to include other maps from this national collection.
We hope this is a first step to developing a national framework for map digitization in libraries and improving access to these rich historical maps for researchers and the public at-large, states Lewis. In 2017, OCUL is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and this project demonstrates the ongoing success of this collaboration.
For more information about OCUL's Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project visit http://ocul.on.ca/topomaps.

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Cambridge University Library Map Department has three spectacular, and very large, maps of parts of Burma painted on cloth by Burmese artists some time around 1860.
These have been digitised and are available for viewing on the Library's Digital Library at: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/search?keyword=burma%20maps&page=1&x=0&y=0
See also http://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/Natasha_Pairaudeau.htm and https://specialcollections.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=14308
By Anne Taylor

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Students of the history of cartography are invited to submit papers for the 2017 Ristow Prize competition. Undergraduate, graduate, and first-year postdoctoral students of any nationality are eligible to compete. Papers must be in English, not exceeding 7500 words, and should be submitted by 1 June 2017, to Evelyn Edson, 268 Springtree Lane, Scottsville, VA 24590, U.S.A.
Appropriate illustrations, especially maps, are encouraged. The winning essay will receive a cash prize of USD 1000.00 and will be published in The Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The prize, named in honor of the late Dr. Walter W. Ristow, is sponsored by the Washington Map Society of Washington, D. C.
For more information, including a list of previous winners, go to the website www.washmap.org or contact Dr. Edson at eedson@pvcc.edu.

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We are pleased to announce the publication by our Sponsor Brepols of Vincenzo Coronelli | Cosmographer (1650-1718) by Marica Milanesi.
472 pages, 44 col. ills., 210 x 270 mm, ISBN 978-2-503-56461, EUR 125.00.
Special price and free shipping for the members of the Brussels Map Circle: EUR 95.00 excl. taxes.
Orders: send an email to info@brepols.net and quote the following discount code BMC310317.
More info on this book or on the series Terrarum orbis: http://www.brepols.net

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E. Novotná, Cartographic culture heritage belongs to UNESCO, 150-159
S. Appel, M. Bidney, Geodex 2.0: saving a legacy map series cartobibliography, 160-169
M. van Egmond, Mapping early Utrecht printers and publishers: experiences with building a geographical interface, 170-182
M. Mastronunzio, E. Dai Prà, Editing historical maps: comparative cartography using maps as tools, 183-195 Research Note
B. Rystedt, Swedish mapping in the Baltic Countries, 196-201

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Papa Günter is proud to announce the birth of his new baby! Weight: 3.9 kg. Name: Early Dutch Maritime Cartography. Papa and baby are doing well. Visit and inspection at home are welcome (Papa needs some rest between 13.00 and 14.00). Tiel, 27 January 2017
From a message signed Günter Schilder

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Contents

  • Exhibitions
    • When Italy drew the world - Cartographic treasures of the Italian Renaissance
  • Looks at Books
    • J. Binimelis, V. Mut and the wall maps of Majorca
    • Universal Cosmography according to both ancient and modern navigators by Guillaume Le Testu
    • Treasures from the Map Room
    • Giovanni Antonio Rizzi Zannoni
    • Philippe Vandermaelen, Mercator of newly-born Belgium. The history of the Établissement géographique de Bruxelles and of its founder
    • Old maps only a few mouse clicks away on www.cartesius.be
  • History and Cartography
    • Studying the production process of the Ferraris Maps (1770s) and its implications for geometric accuracy
    • The Villaret Map
    • Other Villaret Maps
    • Interview
    • How I Got Into Cartography ... through a Different Door! Interview with David Raes
  • Map Circle news
    • The glorious Netherlands (Exhibition report)
    • Map Circle Programme for 2017
    • Globes and Instruments (Conference report)
    • The dissemination of cartographic knowledge (ICA Symposium Dubrovnic report)
    • The map on the scale of the World Colloqium in Albi, France report
    • Paris Map Fair - report
  • Events calendar
  • Exhibition calendar
  • Auction calendar

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