Reading List
Maps at the Bottom of the Ocean
By Brendan Dooley
As March marks International Women’s History Month, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the contributions of AGS member Marie Tharp (1920-2006). Before Tharp’s research and attention to detail in plotting soundings from colleagues, we might still be in the dark regarding the topography of the ocean floor, plate tectonics and a formalized idea of Pangea.
Tharp was a multi-talented researcher and true renaissance learner who had multiple minors, majors and graduate degree paths under her belt, including being an accomplished drafter which led to her work in mapping the oceans’ floors.
This barely scratches the surface of her accomplishments though, and you can learn much more about her here at a “Washington Post” story about her life, through books at every level in the AGSL circulating collection (like Theater of the World: The Maps That Made History, Ocean Speaks, and Women in American Cartography), some of her maps digitized in the AGSL collection here and more.
The AGSL is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., on the third floor of the Golda Meir Library at UWM’s campus.
Reading list for how to use maps in research
Recently, a faculty member in History at the University of California at Riverside asked for book recommendations that he could use for readings in an upcoming graduate seminar on “Nature, Space and Place in Historical Research.” Janet Reyes, Geospatial Information Librarian at UC Riverside, asked for suggestions via the Map Librarian discussion list, Maps-L. Here is a list of titles that were shared via that discussion that may be of interest to readers of the AGS Library Blog. These titles will teach and/or demonstrate how to focus on maps and cartography, helping students think about maps as sources, problems in their construction, how maps lie, etc., and how to bring historic maps into a GIS.
Books
Anthamatten, Peter. 2020. How to Make Maps: An Introduction to Theory and Practice of Cartography. ISBN-13: 978-1138067806, ISBN-10: 1138067806
Crampton, Jeremy. 2010. Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS. ISBN-13: 978-1405121736, ISBN-10: 1405121734
Field, Kenneth. 2018. Cartography. ISBN-13: 978-1589484399, ISBN-10: 1589484398
Gurney, Alan. 2004. Compass: A Story of Exploration and Innovation. ISBN-10: 0393050734, ISBN-13: 978-0393050738
Krygier, J, and D Wood. 2016. Making Maps: A Visual Guide for Map Design for GIS. Third ed. ISBN-13: 978-1462509980, ISBN-10: 9781462509980
Monmonier, Mark. Several books to choose from. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6040304.Mark_Monmonier
Tyner, Judith. 2014. The World of Maps: Map Reading and Interpretation for the 21st Century. ISBN-13: 978-1462516483, ISBN-10: 1462516483
Winchester, Simon. 2021. Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. ISBN-10: 0062938339, ISBN-13: 978-0062938336
Digital Materials
Open textbook – Mapping, Society, and Technology / Manson (2017)
World Historical Gazetteer: https://www.whgazetteer.org/teaching/
From Joseph Kerski, Esri Education Manager: Course in modern web GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/a-complete-first-course-in-modern-web-based-gis/ba-p/1020548
Spatial Reserves: https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com
American Geographical Society Library 