-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Announcement: winner of Best Paper Award
Date:   Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:41:03 -0500
From:   Paige Andrew <[log in to unmask]>
To:     [log in to unmask]



It gives the Co-Editors of the /Journal of Map & Geography Libraries/
great pleasure to announce that the article authored by Marco
Petrella, “Guillaume DeLisle’s /Carte du Duché de Bourgogne/: the Role
of Central and Peripheral Authorities in the Construction of a
Provincial Territory in France in the Early 18^th Century” has won the
Best Paper of the Year Award for Volume 5 (2009). This paper was the
unanimous choice of the award committee, based on it meeting all aspects
of the committee’s selection criteria. Members of the selection
committee noted “it has the most relevance to current issues and trends
from an international perspective, has wide ranging relevance to
practitioners, high value and was very well presented.”

Mr. Petrella’s enthusiasm for historical cartographic research and
attention to detail are clearly present in his article about one of
early cartography’s well-known masters, Guillaume Delisle, and his map
that moved the science and art of mapmaking in a new direction. The
waning years of King Louis XIV’s reign saw major changes in society,
particularly in the historical timeframe that has come to be known as
the Age of Enlightenment, with shifts in political power, military
situations, and broader access to knowledge. Delisle’s map, /Carte du
Duché de Bourgogne/, produced in two sheets in 1709, is but one
reflection of a host of these changes. Mr. Petrella states, “One of the
objectives of this paper is that of reconstructing the evolution of
those relationships, which significantly show the passage from the
absolutism of Louis XIV to the crisis of the centralizing model.”

This article brings out a host of information on many levels, from the
founding of France’s Royal Academy of Sciences (/Académie Royale des
Sciences)/ in 1666 and Delisle’s role and position within it, to the
military situation of the time and how that impacted information shown
on the map. It also includes a description of the person of Guillaume
Delisle and his trials and tribulations and includes the bigger picture
of the creation and recognition of a new political province in France,
Burgundy. It is a fascinating read with the interplay of various forces
at different levels and times, was extensively researched as witnessed
by the voluminous footnotes, and is enhanced by several illustrations of
not only the specific map in question, but parts of others that played a
role in the creation of the /Carte du Duché de Bourgogne/. Finally,
another outcome of this article is that it shows the importance of
retaining manuscript and archival materials; many of the details
surrounding the creation of this historic map would not be known today
had the associated records and maps not been kept and safeguarded for
future generations.

Congratulations are extended to Marco Petrella for providing readers and
researchers everywhere an article that is informative, insightful, and
eye-catching, and that will extend conversations about the history of
mapmaking in France into the future.

Note: this announcement will be published in the forthcoming Vol. 6, No.
1 (Jan. 2010) issue of the journal.

Paige Andrew, Kathy Weimer and Mary Lynette Larsgaard
Co-Editors, Journal of Map and Geography Libraries/Geoscapes