[image: Phil Hoehn 2]                                          Phil Hoehn,
with a Sanborn atlas, Bancroft Library, May 1990. Photograph: Mary-Ellen
Jones (BANC PIC 19xx.349).

Longtime UC Berkeley Maps and Earth Sciences Librarian Phil Hoehn passed
away on February 6, 2023, from complications of colon cancer. He was 81
years old.

Raymond Philip Hoehn, Jr. was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri on October
23, 1941, the son of Raymond Philip Hoehn and Florentine Jeanne Hoehn.
Following World War II, the Hoehn family moved west to southern California
and Phil grew up in Pomona. Inheriting a love of maps from his grandfather,
he majored in geography at UCLA. In 1967, Phil earned an MLS from UC
Berkeley and began his career as the Map Librarian at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft
Library <https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/bancroft> in 1969. He was then
asked to assume responsibility for the map collection of the General
Library, and managed both collections for several years. When the Map
Library was merged with the Earth Sciences map collection, Phil was tapped
to lead the new combined unit, eventually known as the Earth Sciences and
Map Library <https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/earth-sciences>, and did so
until his retirement in 1996.

Phil counted among his favorite accomplishments at Berkeley the development
and management of the California Maps Project, an ambitious effort funded
by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to catalog and re-classify
some 21,000 maps held in the collections of UC Berkeley and UCLA. Randal
Brandt, currently Head of Cataloging at the Bancroft Library, was the
project cataloger. “Phil hired me into my first professional position,” he
recalled. “He mentored me, encouraged me, and supported me in the early
years of my career. He also taught me how to catalog maps, which has been a
part of nearly every job I’ve held since then. I can honestly say that I
owe my professional career to Phil.”

One of the innovative decisions that Phil made during the project was to
include geographic location data in records that describe California Land
Case Maps. These diseños, rough manuscript maps, were used as evidence in
the court cases which determined the validity of Spanish and Mexican land
grants once California was ceded to the United States. Without the online
tools of today, determining correct longitude and latitude data for the
ranchos represented on the land case maps was not a simple task in the
early 1990s.

Although this work was time-consuming, Phil’s decision paid huge dividends
several years later when the Bancroft Library undertook the digitization of
the maps. When discussing the significance of this metadata, Bancroft
Interim Deputy Director Mary Elings, who directed the digitization project
<https://calisphere.org/collections/12347/>, noted the bridge that has been
made between the handiwork of 19th century amateur cartographers and
contemporary Geographic Information Systems in an important aspect of
California history: “Adding the longitude and latitude to the Land Case Map
records provided helpful information for researchers in geo-referencing the
digitized historic maps, which in turn helps current researchers using GIS
systems in their work.”

After he retired from Berkeley, Phil headed down the Peninsula and held the
position of map bibliographer at Stanford University’s Branner Earth
Sciences Library & Map Collections <https://library.stanford.edu/branner> from
1996 to 2000. At Stanford he performed collection development and
maintenance, provided reference assistance, and worked to promote
university-wide awareness of the map collections and services.
Subsequently, from 2000 until 2007 he served as consulting librarian at the
David Rumsey Map Collection (now the David Rumsey Map Center
<https://library.stanford.edu/rumsey> at Stanford), where he created
thousands of detailed catalog records for digitized maps.

Never one to spend much time “retired,” Phil then launched a second career
as a volunteer map cataloger, first at the California Genealogical Society
and then at the  California Historical Society. In 2020, a CHS blog post
<https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/blog/the-behind-the-scenes-map-cataloger/>
described
Phil’s work:

In June 2015, Phil Hoehn … took on the daunting task of organizing the
California Historical Society’s vast map collection … over 45 drawers of
flat sheet maps dating back to at least 1800 (including maps in atlases and
books where cartographers depicted California as an island) as well as
early mining, railroad, and irrigation maps, bound volumes of Sanborn Fire
Insurance maps, and boxes of large rolled maps spanning all the counties in
California. During the four years Phil worked reviewing, researching,
cataloging, and rehousing the maps he discovered many unique titles, some
that appear in only a few other collections in the world.  Many of the
works, by such prominent surveyors and cartographers as William Eddy,
Herman Ehrenberg, Jasper O’Farrell, and August Chevalier, document the
birth and growth of the city of San Francisco … [Phil] leaves nearly 4,000
maps now accessible to researchers. From foldout ones in rare books to
enormous rolled maps that practically took a village to bring up from the
vaults, Phil has discovered, cataloged, preserved, and documented them all.

Frances Kaplan, until recently Director of Library & Collections at the
California Historical Society, expanded on Phil’s impact, saying “It is due
to his efforts that the entire map collection at CHS is now cataloged and
searchable. Along the way he discovered some rare ones and his work
inspired the [current] map exhibit.” The exhibit, “Mapping a Changing
California: From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century
<https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibitions/mapping-a-changing-california-selections-from-the-seventeenth-to-the-twentieth-century/>,”
is on view through March 11, 2023.

Phil joined the Western Association of Map Libraries <https://waml.org/> (WAML)
in 1969, which was just two years after its first meeting took place. Phil
was an active member of WAML his entire career. He found that the benefits
of WAML membership included getting good practical advice from friendly,
experienced colleagues. Phil also emerged as a wheeler and dealer who
obtained many great maps for the UC Berkeley Library by participating in
WAML duplicate exchanges. He viewed membership as a form of therapy
<https://waml.org/waml-information-bulletin/49-2/spotlight-on-phil-hoehn/> and
described WAML meetings as good places to voice local problems and concerns
among like-minded individuals.

Phil had a direct hand in the founding of the California Map Society
<https://californiamapsociety.org/>. Together with Diane M. T. North, who
was then a Ph.D candidate at UC Davis, he co-convened a meeting at the
Bancroft Library in May 1978, which was the inaugural gathering of the
California Map Society. North recalled her long relationship with Phil: “Phil’s
knowledge of and deep enthusiasm for maps, all maps, seemed boundless.
Anyone privileged to have the opportunity to be guided by him and work
alongside him benefited from his professionalism, patience, generosity, and
quiet sense of humor.”

Phil had a longstanding interest in fire insurance maps, including local
California maps, produced by the Dakin Publishing Company
<https://digital.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/static/maps/Hoehn.pdf> and he
published on the subject. His most important publication, compiled together
with William S. Peterson-Hunt and Evelyn L. Woodruff, is a reference tool
of enduring value to map librarians and researchers, the *Union List of
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Held by Institutions in the United States and
Canada*
<https://search.library.berkeley.edu/permalink/01UCS_BER/1thfj9n/alma991000320369706532>,
originally published in 2 volumes by the Western Association of Map
Libraries in 1976-1977. The Earth Sciences and Map Library maintains an updated
online version <https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/sanbul_CA_AB.html> on its
website which documents Phil’s hard work.

Together with UCSB map librarian Mary Larsgaard, Phil also co-authored a
reference resource which historically has been useful to map librarians, the
 *Dictionary of Abbreviations and Acronyms in Geographic Information
Systems, Cartography, and Remote Sensing*
<https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/abbrev.html#a>*. *

Will Murdoch, a book cataloger at the California Historical Society, who
worked with Phil from 2015 until 2019, shared his memories of Phil:

He was my mentor and work colleague in the CHS Library.   I cataloged books
and Phil processed the maps in that collection.  We shared a lot of fun
discoveries with each other and learned about the depth of the CHS
archives.  It was an education for me as Phil’s background was extensive
and he was so kind to share his knowledge with me.  I miss him and our work
together there.

[image: Phil Hoehn]
           Phil Hoehn at the California Historical Society, 2020.
Photograph: Frances Kaplan.

Phil Hoehn played an important role in building the rich and diverse map
collections on the Berkeley campus. As a map librarian, map bibliographer,
metadata specialist Phil was instrumental in providing expert resource
discovery for cartographic resources at many institutions throughout the
Bay Area. More important than his professional qualities, however, Phil
excelled as a colleague, mentor, and friend. Everyone who knew him and
worked with him was made better for the experience.


Randal S. Brandt, Bancroft Library

Heiko Mühr, Earth Sciences & Map Library

Susan Powell, Earth Sciences & Map Library







UC Berkeley Library Blog link:
*https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/2023/03/03/in-memoriam-phil-hoehn-1941-2023*
<https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/2023/03/03/in-memoriam-phil-hoehn-1941-2023/>



Heiko Mühr

Map Metadata and Curatorial Specialist

Earth Sciences & Map Library

50 McCone Hall

University of California

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000

[log in to unmask]