There are many examples we hear about in history class of denied privileges
prior to the Civil Rights movement. As a white male, it hit home for me
several years ago when I was researching the ownership history of our
property using scanned online deeds and plat maps from our county Register
of Deeds office. The original plat map contained a restriction that no
"negros" would be allowed to purchase any of the lots. Shocking and
disgusting, yet there it is on the original (scanned) document. I'm glad
that nobody in modern times had decided this would be offensive, and thus
deny me and others the chance to actually see this on the deed. Today we
thankfully have a diversity of friendly neighbors.
Jeff Essic
NC State University Libraries
On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 12:42 PM Ratliff, Louise <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> There are so many politically-incorrect place names on our maps of
> California, I can’t count them! I certainly want these important cultural
> artifacts to remain in our collection; they reflect the history of our
> state and are valuable for that reason alone.
>
> Best,
> Louise
>
> Louise Ratliff
> Map Cataloger
> UCLA
>
> Sent from Louise's iPad
>
> On Apr 1, 2019, at 3:34 AM, Brad Elbein <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I'm just a map-loving hanger on to this list serve, not one of you Map
> Librarians. But I'm horrified by this idea: de-accessioning the
> embarassing documents " so the casual user does not stumble across it?"
> Don't we as an Enlightenment-evolved culture *want* "casual users" to
> stumble across things that will make them uncomfortable and make them ask
> questions? It seems to me that such an accident serves two purposes: (1)
> It makes the stumblers uncomfortably aware that there were other people and
> ideas here before them and (2) it makes them aware that they are very
> likely every bit as benighted as the past generations, but just don't know
> it yet ... and might want to be humble about knowing "the truth."
>
> I've been thinking lately that the biggest problem with the
> electronic-ization of knowledge is that there are always governments that
> will want to control knowledge, and the electronic storage of knowledge
> makes it so much easier to do away with what's inconvenient for that
> government. Librarians and libraries in the liberal democracies are the
> bulwarks against that. And here we're going to self-sensor out of fear
> that someone might "casually stumble" across some map and ... and what?
> Have a heart attack and die? Burn the library down? Go to the Board of
> Regents? I mean, please. Why would you do the devils work for him?
>
> Brad
>
> *Caveat Lector: I dictate a lot of my e-mails and can't always go back
> and edit, so sometimes they come out as gibberish. Autocomplete also
> sometimes thinks that I'm speaking Spanish and inserts inapposite words.
> Rest assured it's the software, not creeping dementia. *
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 8:38 PM Julie Sweetkind-Singer <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Kathy,
>>
>>
>> I think this is absolutely the role of our university libraries to
>> present all points of view. That's what's needed to conduct serious
>> research. I treat them as I would any other item and keep them on the
>> shelves with everything else. I remove things I think will be vandalized
>> or stolen, but all else stays. The most flagrant vandalism we've had are
>> on two large globes at the main library where the students are fighting as
>> to the naming of the Sea of Japan by scratching out what's on the globe and
>> writing in their preferred names. Interesting to watch, but I wish they
>> wouldn't deface the globes. (These are about 6 feet tall and so hard to
>> store anywhere other than where they are now.)
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>>
>> Julie
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>> Julie Sweetkind-Singer
>>
>> Assistant Director of Geospatial and Cartographic Services
>>
>> Head, Branner Earth Sciences Map Library & Map Collections
>>
>> 397 Panama Mall, 2nd floor
>>
>> Stanford University
>>
>> Stanford, CA 94305
>>
>> 650-725-1102
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Maps-L: Map Librarians, etc. <[log in to unmask]> on behalf
>> of Kathy Stroud <[log in to unmask]>
>> *Sent:* Friday, March 29, 2019 10:44 AM
>> *To:* [log in to unmask]
>> *Subject:* Outdated/Culturally Insensitive Maps and Atlases
>>
>>
>> All,
>>
>>
>>
>> Not sure if we’ve had a discussion about this before. However, it’s
>> coming up in my mind as I’m contemplating weeding our atlas collection. (At
>> this point I’m mostly looking at duplicates, since all the old reference
>> atlases from branch libraries seem to have been transferred to the main
>> library.)
>>
>>
>>
>> Perhaps you could share any institutional guidance you have or merely
>> your collective wisdom from over the years.
>>
>>
>>
>> We have a significant collection of 19th and 20th century atlases. Since
>> we have a strong cartography component in our Geography department, I think
>> it is important to keep these. On a personal level, I also think it’s
>> important as a cultural record of how our society previously viewed the
>> world. However, some of the portrayals of the culture of non-Euro-American
>> areas of the world are offensive to people. (I’m currently looking at a
>> 1944 “Atlas of Global Geography.” I had not realized that in 1944
>> bushman/hottentot was one of the races of mankind.)
>>
>>
>>
>> How do you treat older cartographic (and geography) materials that
>> contain outdated, offensive viewpoints?
>>
>>
>>
>> 1) Transfer to a mediated access area (such as special collections)
>> so the casual user does not stumble across it?
>>
>> 2) Keep in general, circulating shelves along with modern materials
>> to hint that they should be taken in historical context?
>>
>> 3) Deaccession?
>>
>> 4) Ignore issue and hope no one else raises it?
>>
>>
>>
>> Working in an academic setting, I am for keeping at least a sampling of
>> “objectionable” materials and against censoring what we consider
>> embarrassing aspects of our history. How we talk about race has evolved
>> significantly even in my lifetime, but if we don’t understand our past, how
>> can we understand where we are now and where we want to go?
>>
>>
>>
>> This issue with older atlases and other cartographic materials reminds me
>> a lot of how geographers do and don’t deal with “environmental
>> determinism.” In graduate school, there always seems to be an awkward
>> discussion about environmental determinism when studying the history of
>> geography. It’s along the lines of … er, we don’t really believe this
>> theory anymore, it was popular among geographers over 100 years ago, you
>> should know about it so you understand how it influences modern geography,
>> but we don’t really talk about it because it’s embarrassing.
>>
>>
>>
>> Any thoughts for a Friday?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Kathy Stroud
>>
>> *David and Nancy Petrone* Map/GIS Librarian Knight Library
>>
>> 1299 University of Oregon
>>
>> Eugene, OR 97403-1299
>>
>> 541-346-3051
>>
>>
>>
>> “A map is not just a picture—it’s also the data behind the map, the
>> methodology used to collect and parse that data, the people doing that
>> work, the choices made in terms of visualization and the software used to
>> make them.”
>>
>>
>>
>
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